Since I was young I have been able to look at ordinary objects such as curtains, wrinkled clothes or the shadow of a pitcher of water on a table and I have seen the most extraordinary things. Perhaps you have had the same experience. Another example is driving, especially at night, when I am tired. I have seen exotic animals, suspicious strangers, and curious sights in hedgerows, under trees, and beside highways, which on closer inspection turn out to be nothing more than a play of light and shadow.
The play of sunlight on water never seems to have the same effect on me, because it doesn’t create solid images where they don’t really exist. It is more reminiscent of the spiritual in the world, because it has a charming ephemeral quality. This numinous quality is appropriate to the sense that the divine shoots through the relative world, which is limited by time and space. In Hindu philosophy, the three human states of waking, dreaming and dreaming, which comprise a human life, are transcended and become spiritual in the fourth state, which is called turiya. To sublimate things even more, the fifth state of turiatite it is the indivisible transcendence of unchanging pure consciousness.
The Hindu explanation presents us with a dilemma. Wise and approachable as he is, however, he may leave us with the question: How do we speak of the unspeakable? How do we use words to describe what is beyond words? The answer is through metaphor, mythology and its use of symbols. Like words (and words are symbolic too, of course), symbols refer to something larger than themselves.
Now, sometimes it’s nice to play with words for their own sake. When we do, even words that may sound profound have no real sense of deeper meaning, of something beyond them. They are taken literally and are understood to be shallow, superficial and devoid of deeper meaning. In contrast, words used with precision and accuracy remove the veils of confusion and guide us to understanding.
But when are the terms or narratives symbolic and when are they literal? Because it is crucial that we know the difference.
Fantastic and extravagant events are commonly attributed to spiritual and religious adepts. Some of these stories are incredible reading, ranging from the curious to the glorious. There is the incredible story of Tikku-Baba, a fakir who had advanced powers and performed many miracles. One night, a young fakir who used to run errands for Tikku-Baba returned to the great fakir’s house and found Tikku-Baba’s dismembered body and limbs piled in a neat pile. Fearing that a ghastly murder had taken place, the young fakir fled. But full of curiosity he returned in the morning. To his amazement, he found Tikku-Baba in full health, radiant and acting as usual.
This obviously impossible set of events is made even more difficult to assess when recounted by Nisargadatta Maharaj, an enlightened master who was quick to scold would-be adepts for their lack of logical thinking.
In another fantastic story, this time from the Sufi tradition, compassion is overshadowed by atrocity. A whole family were the disciples of a Sufi master. One of the sons had a naturally smiling face. One day, the teacher asked the boy: “Why are you smiling?” The boy was still smiling. In front of the whole family, the Master hit the boy with his cane until it broke. The boy kept the smile on his face. The master took a heavier piece of wood and continued to hit it until his head entered his shoulders and his shoulders entered his body. When the child was a mass of broken bones, flesh and blood, the Master entered and chewed betel nut. When he got out, he pointed to the bloody pile and said, “Who’s lying there?” Then, in a voice of authority, he exclaimed, “Get up!” and the child rose without scars or any signs of damage, completely whole. The teacher announced that the boy was now a Wali (Saint) and would be for the rest of his life. This was the dearest wish of the family and the Master had accomplished in less than an hour what was expected to take many years or lifetimes.
Again, the normally sober minds of leading Sufis like Irina Tweedie or Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee (who published this story) seem to regard it as a literal story, as it was apparently witnessed and told by their predecessor, the Sufi teacher Bhai Sahib.
Metaphor, symbol, myth are the chosen visible and verbal communications for spiritual truths, which cannot be truly expressed in any other way. Why not? Because spiritual truths are not the same as literal truths. Spirituality belongs to the life of the spirit, to transcendence and liberation and ultimately to the Divine or God, Brahman, the Absolute. We have so many names for numinosity precisely because it’s so hard to describe, and when we get into a bipartisan holy war over it, it’s usually because we’ve become attached to symbols and forgotten what they stand for.
There may be a different way of using words if we experience their meaning in a different way. In defense of actor Steven Seagal, who wrecked his Hollywood career by making a movie about planetary pollution that preceded Al Gores’s an inconvenient truth More than a decade ago, psychologist Robert Trager explained, “Other than Steven living in Japan so long that he’s Japanese, and in Japan literal truth isn’t as important as emotional truth. In Japan there’s another level of reality.” one where the literal facts don’t matter as much as the social and emotional facts.”
Emotions predominate over scientific fact in the writings of Laurens van der Post: “Time became reluctant, because it is not only a movement in and through space, but also a movement in feeling, and when feeling is fixed on an unforgettable moment, time is cut in half”. exists”.
So, are the words literal, symbolic, emotional, factual, fantastical, figurative, literal, figurative, abstract, or metaphorical? The answer is, of course, that they can be any, most, some, or all. But our theme here is the use of symbols and metaphors to convey spiritual facts or truths. Sometimes words are simply used to lie.
Extraordinary phenomena, of course, are not always as extraordinary as they seem. The Indian rope trick has been debunked: Sai Baba may not have materialized as a saint vibuti gold jewelry out of the blue and not all crop circles turn out to be the work of extraterrestrial life forms.
Turning now to the mad wisdom school of spiritual instruction, what does it mean when it is said that the fifteenth-century “enlightened madman” Drukpa Kunley instructed a female disciple in meditation, impregnated her, and sent her to a cave to meditate? Apparently, a year later, she returned to find that there had been an avalanche and the cave entrance had been closed for a few months. However, when he found her, he was alive and well despite having only brought three days’ worth of rations with her to the cave the previous year. After a brief period of instruction, she is said to have attained Buddhahood.
When the contemporary spiritual teacher Adi Da Samraj died, there were two expectations: first, that he would rise from the dead; and, second, that his body would show no signs of decomposition, indicating that he was a great yogi, both of which were refuted. Did this discredit Adi Da or did it simply show that his followers were literalizing symbols?
Spiritual metaphors are symbols about reality (ie, the reality of the relative world). When the symbolic and the literal are confused, they disappoint and discourage. The child philosopher, less than the spiritual disciple, is gullible and ultimately materialistic. In his heart, doing and having take precedence over being, and being is close to the presence, and the human presence is close to the divine. We encounter the divine through our identification with it, by displaying those supernatural powers and magical means developed through our spiritual discipline, sometimes known as siddhis.
The siddhis are those perfections or achievements mentioned in the mahabharata. Clairvoyance, levitation, bilocation and the materialization of objects are some examples. However, delving into the manifestation of the siddhis takes us into more mundane realms: knowing the past, present and future, tolerating heat and cold, knowing the minds of others, not allowing another to dominate us. Some are simply elementary meditation experiences, such as experiencing your body as small or infinitely large, heavy or weightless.
Occasionally, mystification is caused by mistranslation, as in the mystification surrounding the virgin birth. Virgin simply means “maiden”. In the original Latin the word refers to sexual inexperience or “uninitiated”. So the virgin birth simply means “born of a maiden.” Similar havoc wreaks on the misconception of the word apocalypse. More than the end of the world, it actually means “lifting the veil” or “revelation”. In the kali yugadeception, illusion and falsehood must be transcended and the truth embraced and accepted.
I have seen truth in a grain of sand, God in an inspiration, eternity in the ocean, and endless mystery in the wind. None of these inclines me to become a nature worshiper, anthropomorphize natural phenomena, or start a religious cult. Metaphor and symbol are the ways those of us who feel compelled to pass on timeless truths and immortal wisdom strive to help others understand.
