I was reading a book yesterday, in an overwhelming night of heat where the internet was suddenly cut off. Reading is a very healthy habit that I admit to having not abandoned, but at the very least, I'm not giving it the time it deserves. In this age of multimedia content, time passes much faster or I'm the one who's getting older - or both.
The book in question is "The First and Only Freedom" by Jiddu Krishnamurti a subject who was in this world by chance as it clearly did not belong to him. As I read this wonderful being of clarity, the inspiration flowed in me. I am going to base myself on his writings - and his PREFACE written by Aldous Huxley - to synthesize it a little and lead us to reflection.
Symbols
Man lives at the same time in two worlds: the world of what is given and the world of what is made by it. The given is the world of matter, life and consciousness, and the world of symbols. Our thoughts are based on symbols, they are the way we find to produce in series things like language (letters and words), mathematics (numbers, formulas and operators), music (with its notes, tones, times and its own written language) and other basic things to develop and replicate our power as creators. Without this system of symbols there would be no art, no science, no philosophy and no talking about our complex language. It is something that strongly differentiates us from animals.
So, we can say quietly that symbols are indispensable. But, like any tool, the wisdom of those who use them is decisive when it comes to qualifying them as positive or negative -and being even more precise- constructors or destructors. The incorrect use of these can bring harmful consequences.
As an example, we can take science against religion and politics. The first gives us the power to manage nature, understand it and replicate systems that allow us to improve our quality of life, care for the environment and manage natural resources in an efficient and enriching way. On the other hand, the second group can lead us to fanaticism, to brutal and dark things such as genocide, spiritual laziness, collective suicides or dark crusades. In the first case, the symbols were carefully chosen, analyzed and progressively adapted to the physical world. In the second, as a general rule, they were poorly chosen, poorly analyzed, and subjected to appropriate transformation to attune them to the harmony of life. Even more distressing is this second group, with their inadequate symbols inspiring everyone, as much respect as if by magic they were more real than the realities they represent.
So in religious and political texts it is not assumed that words flawlessly represent facts and things, but that, on the contrary, facts and things serve to prove the validity of words. A. Huxley. Textual quotation-
Our daily reactions to the environment are usually based on these irrational symbols.
"(...) We persist in using symbols not only irrationally but also with hints of idolatry and even madness. The final result of all this is that man has been able to commit, in cold blood and for long periods of time, acts that the beasts are only capable of committing for brief instants when they are at the height of frenzy, desire or terror. Aldous Huxley - Quote-
Worshipping a symbol is a dangerous practice, can lead you to take evil paths in the name of conduct that is followed blindly without analysis or question. So much so that symbolic attachment to the earth can create a negative and divisive nationalism of people. The attachment to the symbol of wealth can lead you to the enormous and selfish greed of wanting to create empires like the ones we see today on the part of bankers and wealth monopolizers. The thirst for struggle can be transformed into Stalinism or crusades - and crucifixions. Fortunately, man can, also transform the intermittent goodness of the animal into charity, tolerance and empathy towards our fellow-beings. Can this kind of idealism save the world from its counterpart? Only time will tell. I can only say that there are subjects who follow a flag as if it were a god, not a towel on a stick, and they have hundreds of bombs under their control. This does not give us a good picture when it comes to analyzing.
Not even the best cookbook can replace the worst of foods.
The latter seems to be a coherent, logical and irrefutable reasoning. Throughout the centuries, a group of thinkers, theologians and erudites fall into the error of believing that they can synthesize in words a standard method of thinking that can only be reached by introspection of how we perceive reality or facts, on the contrary they seek to verbalize what can only be learned by stripping us of this type of limiting static structuring.
According to Saint Paul "The letter kills; the spirit vivifies. "And why is Eckhart-asked, why fall into gossip about God? Anything you say about God is false." At the other end of the world the author of one of the Mahayana sutras stated that "Buddha never preached the truth, for he understood that you have to discover it within yourselves".
Continuing; this issue is not impossible to resolve, it was overcome throughout history and in various places in the world. But although they spoke and wrote about it, they did not pursue building a doctrine or movement for fear of falling into exaggerating the value of their words and making them stronger than reality and facts that mutate over time. Transforming this into symbols simply limits their true power which is immortal as it can be constantly analyzed for changes in the environment. The purpose is not to create a serialized formula, a set of quotes and famous phrases that move you to enlightenment. If not an invitation to self-diagnosis of our ills - a subversive idea for classical psychology - and the only place where man can find the solution to the evil detected is reality through experience.
