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Forum August Learning through Symbols: Water from: Hazrat Inayat Khan - The Unity of Religious Ideals |
To a person who sees only the surface of life, symbols mean nothing. But when we uncover their meaning, we find a beauty hidden in them. There is a great joy in understanding, especially in understanding things that to most people mean nothing. It requires intuition, even something deeper than intuition - insight - to read symbols. To the one to whom symbols speak of their nature and of their secret, each symbol is in itself a living manuscript. It is speaking without speaking; it is writing without writing. The symbol may be said to be an ocean in a drop. Water In the old Scriptures, such as the Vedanta and the Old Testament, spirit is symbolized as water. One wonders why something which is next to earth should be considered as spirit. The nature of water is to give life to the earth, and so the nature of the soul is to give life to the body. Without water the earth is dead; so is the body without soul. Water and earth both mix together; so the spirit mixes with matter and revivifies it. And yet the spirit stands above matter, as water in time lets the earth go to the depth, and stands itself above the earth. But one may ask: "Is the spirit hidden under matter, as the soul in the body?" The answer is: "So does water stay beneath the earth." There is no place where water does not exist; there are places where earth is not to be found; so nowhere in space spirit is absent; only the absence of matter is possible. The symbolical way of expressing high ideas does not come from the brain; it is an outcome of intuition. The beginning of intuition is to understand the symbolical meaning of different things, and the next step is to express things symbolically. It is in itself a Divine Art, and the best proof of it is to be found in the symbol of water, which is so fitting to express the meaning of spirit. Out of the heart that is happy springs a fountain that pours water from above and in time brings flowers and fruit. Hazrat Inayat Khan: Aphorisms |
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Learning through Symbols: Wine from: Hazrat Inayat Khan - The Unity of Religious Ideals |
Wine is considered sacred, not only in the Christian faith, but in many other religions also. In the ancient religion of the Zoroastrians, Jami Jamsshyd, the bowl of wine from which "Jamsshyd drank deep," is a historical fact. Among the Hindus, Shiva considered wine sacred. And in Islam, though wine is forbidden on earth, yet in Heaven it is allowed, in a symbolical form. Haussi Kaussar, the sacred fountain of Heaven, about which there is so much spoken in Islam, is a fountain of wine. Wine is symbolical of the soul's evolution. Wine comes from the annihilation of grapes; immortality comes from the annihilation of self. The bowl of poison which is known in many mystical cults also suggests the idea of wine - not a sweet wine, but a bitter wine. When the self turns into something different from what it was before, it is like the soul being born again. This is seen in the grape turning into wine. The grape, by turning into wine, lives; as a grape it would have vanished in time. Only, by turning into wine, the grape loses its individuality, and yet not its life. The selfsame grape lives as wine; and the longer it lives, the better the wine becomes. For a Sufi, therefore, the true sacrament is the turning of one's grape-like personality, which has a limited time to live, into wine; that nothing of one's self may be lost, but, on the contrary, it may be amplified, even perfected. This is the essence of all philosophy and the secret of mysticism A pure life and a clean conscience are as bread and wine for the soul. Hazrat Inayat Khan: Gayan - Boulas |
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