“God said: Everything in your life is a symbol. A china cup that was precious to your mother is precious to you now because it is a symbol of your mother’s love. Money is a symbol. A new car is a symbol. A rose is a symbol. We can say that you are a symbol. You certainly emblemize My love. From My love, I fashioned you.
What is not a symbol? All the concrete things in the world that exist are symbols. We can say that they are tokens. Love is not token, but love is seen in its expressions.
When you polish your furniture, are you not expressing a simple love? When you change a tire, is that not an expression of love? Even if you grumble, you are changing the tire. You might as well be genial about what is yours to do. Even tying a shoelace symbolizes love. Love is the only action to take.” HL1684
“God said: …The physical obviously has no life of its own. You consider the body the moving force. But you also know that cannot be. The spirit does not follow the body. The body is not a free agent. It accompanies you. You do not accompany it.” HL 1372
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Which is real: an object or its symbol?
The word symbol (from greek sum-/sun- «together» and bol/ballein «to throw, to reach») was originally referring in ancient Greece to an object cut into two (shards) being used as a sign of recognition when the bearers could assemble the two pieces.
Aren’t all the objects in the outside world, including the humans in their bodies, only half of what they are as the other half is to be found somewhere else and reassembled with it by the two bearers in order to constitute a sign of recognition, a significant whole, an integrity? Objects and persons (as objects), even ideas, are not defined only by their specific physical or concrete properties and so-called function in their daily usage (the first bearer). They are defined by their relation with other objects or persons or ideas (the second bearer). In fact, each of us constitutes two bearers that have to be reassembled.
It takes three components to establish a relation : two objects or facts to be related and a mediator, the mind, to connect the two objects or facts together. The mind, in its double function as a mediator or go-between, is represented simultaneously by the two bearers of the Greek sumbolon.
We can say that objects or facts are relations as well as separate entities. Language is a perfect illustration of this reality. Words have shape, physical properties as acoustic objects or graphic objects. Each word has a meaning as its property but the meaning of one word is just half of what it is. Because the meaning of a word needs to be linked to the meaning of another word if it is to be understood, that is to be meaningful or full of meaning. Note that in any dictionary a word is always defined by other words. There is no way out. We always talk of something by referring it to something else. Everything in the universe is connected, everything acquires its meaning through this connection which is also called sharing, consciously or not.
Perhaps reality is made of pure relations (basically geometric) while the seeming separateness of objects or facts—facts and objects are in a certain way equivalent or interchangeable—is only an illusion. For the human mind, objects and facts are always more than their physical properties. They always refer to an intangible other half, the sign of recognition with something else. So they are impregnated with meaning. They are interpreted, translated into another language, a language that creates a link, a bound, a unity between the tangible and the intangible. They are evaluated, judged, compared to each other by the mind. In that sense, everything in our life is a symbol. Any object bears in itself an invisible half which it needs to connect with to get its full meaning. A cup is a container. Yet it has a meaning or symbol of containing something that is a sign of recognition of life like water, milk. Oil is a vital source of energy and energy bears the sign of recognition or symbol of power. And what about rings, diamonds and roses?
We then acknowledge that an object possesses a factual aspect and a symbolic or relational aspect, its sign of recognition. But these two aspects are not always obvious to each other. There might be a time/space delay between the recognition or the connection between the two aspects. For example, it took thousands of years for the human being to relate copulation with the birth of babies, probably because of the time/space delay between the two events or facts. The relation between a seed (of a banyan tree) and a banyan tree is not written in full letters on the seed nor on the tree. Even nature goes through this time/space delay to express the relation between the seed (the idea, the thought) and the banyan (the expression of the seed). Time and space are what keeps the relation hidden. The relation is invisible, yet these two objects, the seed and the tree get their life, their significance through their relation, their invisible connection which is their basic unity. What links a father and a mother is the child who is the sign of recognition between the three entities. By themselves, the father and the mother have only half of their meaning. When they recognize their mutual link, their unity, they express their wholeness, their integrity, their truth.
And as it goes with the relation between the seed and the plant, there is a time/space delay in language. We get the global meaning only after all of a sentence has unfolded in time and space.
Now we must ask what the link, the symbol, the sign of recognition is made of.
What is a symbol made of?
It is made of the mind and its projection. The origin of the symbol is in the mind and the link to the fact or the object is made through a projection of the mind called a language or a program. What is a language if not a set of rules that pre-determine the relation that has to exist between its components, that is the words. We can call these rules, according to what level of the language they are applied to, the grammar, or the syntax. Genetics is a language that links various components of the body through a specific grammar and syntax of sequence units called genes and creates a unity, a wholeness, integrity in defining a physical body. The same goes for human languages, not only spoken or written language, but also mathematic, music, painting as other forms of language with their grammar and syntax of numbers, sounds, color combinations, patterns, equations, and rules.
In the relative world of separation, the link between the objects (words or things) is made through technical components, physical or mental that don’t seem to share the nature of what they are linking. Each language has its own terminology, its way of organizing and expressing ideas through an idiosyncratic grammar and syntax. This explains the multiplicity of languages and the problems inherent to translation. In chemistry, we call these components that serve to program the relation between atoms and molecules «mediators» like the electric sparkle that allows two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen to combine in a new molecule of water. In the human technological word, we use screws and bolts and welding to assemble components of aircraft. What gives the impression of wholeness, unity to the aircraft is this incredible network of screws and bolts and wires assembled in a programmed way.
And since we postulated a time/space delay in the relation between two objects in the physical world, we must say that it is because of this time/space delay that the relationship has to be programmed, genetically, chemically or logically (with the extension of logic in the computers). Here we can make an interesting comparison between our Programmation of relations and God’s way of creating. It is already part of our dreams to make interplanetary travels by teleportation using only the power of thought to manifest instantly without the time/space delay. Just think of a location and you are there without even «traveling». When God created us and the Universe, He did not need any tools, any words, any codons, any molecules, any computer program, any time, any space, even any preconceived idea or plan. We were created by His desire and His joy. He created us as a pure relation with Himself. There was no need for a separate us as a personal self, a personal fact, a personal object identified with a body. There was no time/space delay in the consciousness of oneness between the Son and the Father. It was and it is still present, without any past or future, without any beginning or end. There is an instantaneous manifestation of God’s desire or will the moment it is thought.
Before separation, we surely had the same power to express and manifest instantly our thoughts without the necessity of knots and bolts and screws and computer languages and programs. But after separation, time and space had to be projected so delay appeared between the thought and its manifestation. Time and space have the double role of the bearers to rebuild relations by paradoxically separating them into seeming separated entities. We came to call this delay «work» in the relative world. Indeed, we have to work to bring an idea to its expression in the relative world. Work is a time/space delayed expression of a thought through a programming language and its execution. What God creates has the capacity to self-execute without any external intervention or interposition. Life is always autonomous, continuous. What man fabricates is never autonomous, it is discontinuous.
Symbols do not need objects
It seems that the complementary half of the objects or facts of the outside world has to be found by the mind in the invisible, inner world. The other «half» of the outside Earth might be found in the inside Heaven. The seeming separation between Heaven and Earth had happened before the Greeks. But the ancient bearers already knew they had to bring the two halves together. Plato was surely one of the bearers.
Have we once again put things upside down? We tend to think that objects, even persons in the world are real, concrete while their symbol seems abstract, referential but not «really» real. But shouldn’t we start putting things right side up by stipulating that objects are abstractions (abs-tracted or ex-tracted, drawn from the mind) while their symbol or sign of recognition is real?
For example, which is more real: Einstein’s equation e=mc2 which is the symbol or sign of recognition of the oneness relation between matter (mass) and energy (the square of the speed of light) or the nuclear bomb that resulted from the equation? If the relation between mass and energy expressed in Einstein’s equation hadn’t been discovered, there wouldn’t have been an object or a fact such as a nuclear chain reaction that defines a nuclear bomb. The equation is the program that generates the bomb. But it could generate something else or nothing at all. It is a potential. Hence, a relation, a symbol, a sign of recognition can exist without any object or fact. It is a potential. But an object or a fact cannot exist without a relation. Relativity and quantum physics support this formulation. We could even say that the discovery of the hidden relation generates the invention. Einstein used to say that imagination is more important than (scientific) knowledge. The object is one of many possible actualizations of a relation. There is only one life, which is a pure relation but there are so many scenarios!
Ultimately, if different types or levels of relations can exist between objects, facts, people in the world, there is only one relationship that really exists. Since only God or One [1] IS, love is His unique symbol or sign of recognition. And, by extension, this symbol is us individually and collectively. Is not the heart that is the pure symbol or sign of this recognition?
« And so, you are one, and you are One with Me. There is no two that will meet. There is one who is meeting now.» HL 6620
[To be continued…]
Written by Normand Bourque on Feb 16, 2013
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