Page 17 - NAMAH-Oct-2021

Namah The symbolic and the subjective

its relationship to the symbolic age: that are called mudras, deliberately used by
dancers to convey a wealth of messages.
“The closer touch attempted with the psychical Facial expressions and the tone of the voice
entity behind the vital and physical mentality are part of our body’s language. Juxtaposing
and an increasing reliance on its possibilities all these symbols together we are able to
must lead to the ultimate discovery that man communicate with another person.
is inwardly a soul and a conscious power of
the Divine and that the evocation of this real
man within is the right object of education and
indeed of all human life if it would find and live
according to the hidden Truth and deepest law
of its own being. That was the knowledge which
the ancients sought to express through religious
and social symbolism, and subjectivism is a road
of return to the lost knowledge. First deepening
man’s inner experience, restoring perhaps on an
unprecedented scale insight and self-knowledge
to the race, it must end by revolutionising his
social and collective self-expression (3)” Yet one is never sure if the other person’s
understanding is the same as what one tried
So we can hope that the symbolic knowledge to convey. A colour-blind person’s green
of the mystics will be re-discovered in the looks red to a normal person. They both call
subjective age and be integrated into new it ‘red’ and no one knows exactly what the
knowledge-systems. other is seeing. We are unable to say how
much pain we feel, what love or peace mean
Symbols to us, how a dish tastes, how intensely we
feel. The subjective system allows these
If we look around, we will find that symbols differences, and goes further to say that
are all around us — they inform us, educate these differences can never be resolved, and
us, and enrich our experiences of life. Traffic do not need to be resolved. The objective
signals are symbols we have to learn to system has an absolute scale of measurement
navigate on roads. Quickly we learn to read that tries to quantify experiences, such as pain
the skull and cross bones danger signs. We and pleasure, against a human standard
know scores of acronyms, currency symbols, that is supposed to be absolute. The relative
and other images, such as political party number with respect to one’s own past
emblems, abbreviations on food jars, company experiences is not considered to be reliable,
logos and flags of countries. With every word although it is the only practical scale that
we read we are decoding symbols. Characters helps us deal with our current situation.
of a script are symbolic representations of When so many human systems rely on the
sounds. When placed together they form symbolic and the subjective, one wonders
words. When words are placed together they why we place so much premium on outer
form ideas. When we speak, we use gestures instruments.

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