What Is the Point of Spiritual Imagery?
Dear friends,
A question that comes up from time to time is whether Spirit is impersonal (“The cosmic ground of being”) or personal. Yogananda referred to God as Divine Mother. He said the Mother is closer than the Father. The child, when he falls and scrapes his knee, usually calls for Mom, not Dad.
This of course has nothing to do with gender. It is about the masculine and feminine principles of the universe, known in the Chinese philosophy as yin and yang: the opposites and duality that keep the universe balanced.
But is Spirit really either? Our materially oriented minds cannot really open our hearts and feel devotion or love for “The Cosmic Ground of Being” (or at least mine can’t!). So we use imagery as a doorway to the Infinite. When I look into Yogananda’s eyes my heart opens and devotion blossoms. Buddhists and Christians feel similarly when contemplating the images that touch their hearts.
One cannot explain particle physics to a five-year-old. This is neither the fault of the five-year-old, nor a demonstration that there is something amiss with particle physics. Physicists use a model for many things (light, the atom, etc.). They know full well that their models are flawed. That is, the models do not perfectly capture the reality of the item under discussion. But if they relax and use the models without nitpicking at their inaccuracies, they come to understand things they would not otherwise be able to understand. The models do more explanatory good than harm. And in this way, science progresses.
The same is true for our spiritual imagery (God, Spirit, what-have-you). If we relax and use whatever imagery works for us, we can open our hearts and develop in ways that would be nearly impossible to accomplish otherwise. It is nearly impossible to “think” our way to Spirit, and imagery often bypasses the intellect. Avoiding or eschewing imagery is simply not helpful.
May we each work to get past the no-saying mind. May we further use whatever we see in the world around us to expand our limited consciousness into the infinite Spirit.
Blessings,
David G., manager
For the Gang at East West