“The symbols of the higher religions may at first sight seem to have little in common,” wrote a Roman Catholic monk, the late Father Thomas Merton, in a brief but perspicacious article entitled “Symbolism: Communication or Communion?” “But when one comes to a better understanding of those religions, and when one sees that the experiences which are the fulfillment of religious belief and practice are most clearly expressed in symbols, one may come to recognize that often the symbols of different religions may have more in common than have the abstractly formulated official doctrines.”
“The true symbol,” he states again, “does not merely point to something else. It contains in itself a structure which awakens our consciousness to a new awareness of the inner meaning of life and of reality itself. A true symbol takes us to the inner meaning of life and of reality itself. A true symbol takes us to the center of the circle, not to another point on the circumference. It is by symbolism that man enters affectively and conscoiusly into contact with his own deepest self, with other men, and with God.” ” ‘God is dead’ . . . means, in fact, that symbols are dead.”
To quote the monk Thomas Merton again: “One cannot apprehend a symbol unless one is able to awaken, in one’s own being, the spiritual resonances which respond to the symbol not only as sign but as ‘sacrament’ and ‘presence.’ ” “The symbol is an object pointing to a subject. We are summoned to a deeper spiritual awareness, far beyond the level of subject and object.”
Mythologies, in other words, mythologies and religions, are great poems and, when recognized as such, point infallibly through things and events to the ubiquity of a “presence” or “eternity” that is whole and entire in each. In this function all mythologies, all great poetries, and all mystic traditions are in accord; and where any such inspiriting vision remains effective in a civilization, every thing and every creature within its range is alive. (MLB 257)
