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The Power of Symbolism

by Swami Kriyananda

Symbolism is a bridge between evident and subtle realities. The literalminded person believes only in the reality of what he sees. To him, matter is reality; spiritual vision is an illusion. The literalist (a good designation for him, wouldn’t you say?) beholds the world only in terms of its superficial diversity, not of its underlying unity. He is therefore uncomfortable with symbols. His preference is for facts, the more concrete, the better.

In the literalist’s makeup there is little poetry. His understanding is neither subtle nor deep. To him, a mountain is a pile of earth and rocks; a lake, merely a body of water. Any thought that he devotes to Nature is statistical: a mountain’s height, a lake’s depth and circumference, the extent to which the presence of a mountain may prevent rain from reaching the nearby plains.

As a person’s awareness becomes more refined, he intuits subtle relationships between diverse phenomena, and between material phenomena and the subtle realm of ideas. With developing wisdom he comes finally to see all creation as meaningful, not chaotic.

For an underlying coherence links everything together. The more refined a person’s understanding, the more inclined he becomes to see symbols of spiritual truth everywhere. The dense curtain of material form conceals abstract principles. The tallness of a tree, for example, suggests mental qualities such as divine aspiration, pride, or worldly ambition.

Symbols may be artistic or poetic without necessarily being rooted in truth. They may only please the mind, or clarify some concept for us as cartoons do sometimes in poking fun at political hypocrisy. A symbol may merely serve as a memory peg: a reminder of something to be done, or to be kept in mind. Certain symbols, however, have universal relevance, especially if they derive from superconsciousness. In this case, they may have deep power, resonating with fundamental realities of existence, and thereby amplifying our awareness. Such symbols stir our hearts and uplift our consciousness; they may even awaken us to some degree of soulrecognition.

Motherhood is one such symbol. If universalized, and not depicted solely in terms of a specific mother or child, it can become a symbol of universal compassion. Universalized even more, motherhood can be seen as a symbol of the Divine Mother’s infinite love and compassion for Her human children, and for all creatures.

The ocean as a symbol, too, contains spiritual power. If depicted with sweeping majesty and not close up to show only a few waves crashing together, its vastness suggests infinity, especially the infinity of divine consciousness.
I do not mean to imply that symbolism is inherent in any form. It is our consciousness that makes it meaningful. But consciousness is, as I’ve already said, the underlying reality of all matter. Considering the ocean as a symbol, then, divine consciousness is the “ocean” on which appear the innumerable waves of cosmic manifestation.

The more deeply attuned we become to divine consciousness, the more inspiring and uplifting for us are the symbols that represent that consciousness. The more attuned we become to the spiritual concepts behind a symbol, the more immediate its effect on us; it is not gradual, as the intellect labors to understand and absorb them. For symbolism is a bridge not only between evident and subtle realities, but between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the known and the unknown.

Symbols born of deep perception of a spiritual truth may have the power to stir even people who lack spiritual awareness. For a person may be steeped in materialism, and may suppress his spiritual nature indefinitely, but he can never abandon that nature completely. His soul is who he is, ineluctably and forever. It is the central truth of his existence, whether he recognizes it consciously or not. Thus, even if the meaning of a spiritual symbol elude our understanding, on some level of consciousness we can hardly fail to respond to it.

A painting of a high mountain, if executed sensitively and with inner awareness, may impress the average viewer as just that: a painting of a high mountain. But if he gazes at it a little longer, he may find that for some reason it makes him “feel good.” Motherhood, again, consciously depicted as a symbol of compassion, may impress the “literalist” as merely a painting of a woman with a baby. But if it was executed with deep sensitivity, even the literalist may find himself enlarging on his first thought. Perhaps he’ll recall his own wife or mother, and reflect affectionately on that memory. He may even, if he allows his mind the liberty of wandering a bit, surprise himself in the act of reflecting with unaccustomed expansiveness on the meaning of motherhood itself.

There is a potential for symbols to exert a definite power on the mind, more so than most people are consciously aware. For this reason, the ancient rishis, or sages, of India, having decided to give outward expression to their inner realizations, did not limit themselves to simply describing them in their writings. To affect people’s consciousness more deeply, they offered also the power of suggestion through symbols and allegories. By suggestive images they tried to build bridges, however tenuous, between the world of the senses and the reality they perceived, permeated with divine bliss.

High spiritual states are not dry intellectual abstractions. Far from it! They vibrate with divine love, joy, and wisdom. The symbols the rishis used, therefore, were often joyful, sometimes quite funny, and always delightful. We should view them in terms of the rishis’ own cheerful familiarity with divine Truth. Not for them, the heavy curtain of funereal awe with which worldly people so often drape spiritual concepts!

The literalist may be offended, and certainly will find inexplicable, the classic tale of Krishna’s theft, when a young boy, of the gopis’ garments while those cowherd girls were bathing in the river. According to legend, Krishna then told them to emerge from the water one by one, arms upraised, to reclaim their property. The cynic must surely ask himself, “Is this any way for a ‘divine incarnation’ to behave?”

There is a good explanation, however. For God sees all of us with equal clarity, whether clothed or unclothed. It is false modesty on our part to imagine that we can hide from Him anything that we are, and anything that we think or feel in our hearts. To approach Him, we must open to Him our innermost secrets, fully accepting that He knows them already. For only by perfect openness with Him is there any hope of achieving union with Him. As Jesus Christ put it, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Perfect inner purity is itself a gift of God. We can never achieve it without first “undressing” before Him, or disclosing ourselves frankly as we are to our own innermost conscience.

The poet who gave us this vignette from Krishna’s lila, or divine play, (the story was, I suspect, the poet’s own invention) was having fun at the expense of the false shame with which so many people approach God. At the same time, he was offering a deep and important lesson.

It must be understood in advance, then, that the symbols described in this book, though often exuberant, are at the same time rich with meaning. A few of them may even have been intended to puzzle us. And a few certainly were intended to amuse.

I ask you, therefore, to approach them not only with the furrowed brow of deep thought, but also in a spirit of fun, when appropriate. In this way, you’ll derive the greatest benefit from studying them. (1280 words)

Excerpted from The Hindu Way of Awakening: Its Revelation, Its Symbols, published by Crystal Clarity, Publishers.

Live as the Masters Live

from a Sunday Morning Worship talk by Asha Praver

I read a story in Guidepost magazine about a woman who fell into such a deep depression after her daughter died of cancer that she thought she would never get out of it. Then one day she received a letter from a man she’d never met.

“I read in the newspaper about your daughter’s death,” the man wrote. “She sure sounds like a wonderful girl. I will pray for you and for her.” He went on to explain that he was serving a life sentence in prison. Incarcerated like that, he didn’t have a lot of different ways to serve people. So he made it a practice every day to read the obituaries and to pray for those who had died and all those who were mourning them.

From the time she received that letter, the mother said, the depression began to lift.

There are so many things to love about this story. What I especially like is the creativity of that prisoner. We tend to think of creativity as having to do with art. But creativity is the simple act of making something from nothing. And the most important place to be creative is in the way we live our lives. That prisoner had almost no options, and yet even with his very limited choices, he found a way to serve.

So often people say to me, “I would be much more spiritual if . . .,” “I would be much more serviceful if . . .,” “I would be much more happy if . . . .” Then they go on to explain how their circumstances prevent them from doing what they think they need to do to expand their consciousness. And often they describe very challenging circumstances. Life does fence us in. It does take away our options.

But friends, nothing prevents us from expanding our consciousness except our own unwillingness to expand it.

An oldtime politician recently made a very astute comment. “Perseverance,” he said, “is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.”

So what if you can’t make any big changes in your life? Then make little ones, at least make little changes in your consciousness. What you are today is the result of everything you thought, felt, acted upon, and desired yesterday.

What you will be tomorrow is the result of what you are doing right now. So, what are you doing right now? Are you, like so many people in this world, gradually narrowing yourself to a tiny pinprick of consciousness, just a shadow of your divine potential? Or are you living as the masters live, ever expanding your sense of Self until it embraces infinity?

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