Correspondence
“Becoming is not a contradiction of being but the epiphany of being”
~ Ananda Coomaraswamy.
Traditional teachings say that our empirical, material world is a reflection of the spiritual from which it receives all of its reality; or in other words the metaphysical manifests itself in the world. Everything in existence expresses this in its own way according to its own order, and so connects all things – which in itself is a reflection of the principle of divine unity. There is a plurality and hierarchy of how the spiritual manifests itself, in greater and lesser forms. In the rocks, plants, animals, higher beings, humanity, and also in subtler forms, events, ideas, mind and ‘myths.’
When viewed in this way all things become meaningful and ‘symbolic,’ in the sense that they correspond with and are able to tell us about the spiritual and the multiple, higher (or even lower) states of being. They also admit an additional plurality of meanings according to their proper order, which are not mutually exclusive, and rather than contradicting each other they complete one another.
So we can then do away with the trend that by viewing something in a symbolic sense we also deny its literal, historical sense, and vice versa. In the Christian Tradition in particular there are the ‘Four Senses of Scripture’ or ‘Quadriga,’ in which the four levels of reading sacred texts were literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical. For most of us anything ‘mythical’ and ‘ideal’ is purely fiction and at best, in the mythic case, is simply psychological as expressed by Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. Yet the sacred view is that the realm of ‘facts’ and history divorced from their context in the whole are what is illusory and meaningless. The psychological has spiritual reality and symbolic significance yes, as elaborated, but it isn’t the highest.
Sacred History
What better example to behold than the life of Jesus Christ for witnessing most blatantly the unification of spiritual and worldly, and what better symbol than the cross in its unification of the vertical and horizontal, man with God, his two heredities, and more? A symbol that, much like many myths, appears repeatedly and independently across many traditions across the world.
In understanding the correspondences between the spiritual and the worldly, we can see that events unfolded exactly as they were meant to. His death on the cross for example, rich with symbolic meaning, was inevitable and could not have occurred any other way; that the man whose heart most fully embodied the divine would be crucified in a world that had forgotten sacred truth.
And what’s more is that the principles from which the events are derived are eternally present. By imitation their spiritual implications, teachings, and transformative properties can be felt and seen here and now ‘within you,’ not just at the inevitable transformation at the end of our lives, God willing. Christ is not merely a past event that unfolded two millennia ago for us to critically analyze. Rather He transcends time and belongs to every age, an eternal bridge between heaven and earth, a physical manifestation of prime realities.
It becomes unnecessary then to argue with or deny the reality of His life, death and resurrection. Both of which miss the point. As Tolkien put it: “Art has been verified … Legend and history, one might say, myth and historical truth, have met and fused.” Perfectly so.
This also puts down the misguided idea that temporal origin and mythological parallels in other cultures implies ‘theft’ or somehow disproves the Christian Tradition, rather, if the teaching is done right it has the opposite, strengthening effect:
“The resemblances between these myths and the Christian truth is no more accidental than the resemblances between the sun and the sun’s reflection in a pond.”
~ C.S Lewis.
They Might See with Their Eyes
Christ’s ascension wasn’t a movement through space, Heaven isn’t a physical location somewhere ‘out there.’ Instead, it was a transformation, a shift from the material to the spiritual: the glorification and divinization of His human nature. Because of this, it lies beyond the limits of our ordinary perception. Similarly, the Second Coming is not only about a wonder awaiting humanity at an unknown point in the future, but a transformation of being within us at any time; after our own symbolic crucifixion and hellish descent through spiritual practice “the soul which lay dead in a living body doth rise again” (St. Augustine). Christ will become visible to those who have the gift to perceive Him. When the soul is purified to reflect the divine, the Holy Spirit reveals itself and brings Christ to life within the person; and so, Christ is born through the union of the Spirit and the body.
“But you cannot see Me with your present eyes. Therefore I give to you divine eyes by which you can behold My mystic opulence.”
~ Bhagavad Gita, 11.8.
“Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed.”
~ G. K. Chesterton.
His life, teachings and much more are eternally existing. Death can be, and is defeated. All things can be, and are made new. Christ is risen; from the tomb which mortals are laid to rest, and his second coming is immanent; in our hearts and in our minds and universally before us.
“And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”
~ John 21:25.
Sum Ergo Oro 