Myths and Symbols
This website is about symbols of Presence in the Japanese culture. The Japanese culture, like all cultures on earth, has grown out of the influences of conscious schools. Conscious school on earth teaches people to wake up from the state of sleep in which they spent their life, to the state of Divine Presence. The legacy of a conscious school surviving through the ages in the form of art, literature and ritual, is, in its conception, designed to carry a double meaning, an inner and an outer one. The inner meaning is directed to the participants’ personal development, while the outer meaning preserves the tradition through the ages. The outer and inner meanings can be differentiated by their relation to the divine, by where they locate God. The outer meaning refers to God, Gods or Angels as external beings to be pleased or asked forgiveness from. Accordingly, its rituals have a strong external flavor intended to be seen and accepted by them. The inner meaning locates God within one, as one’s own Divinity or Higher Self, and focuses on reaching him. Gods and Angels refer to faculties in man that attempt to awaken the God within.
There are definitely no 'gods' or 'demons' outside of yourself.
-- Padmasanbhava
Poor wretch, you carry about a god within you, and know nothing of it.
-- Epictetus
The rituals and acts of worship to reach the God within are invisible and internal. With the passage of time, as a rule, the inner meaning is forgotten and only the outer meaning remains. Consequently, what later generations see when they approach esoteric traditions, without exception, is only the outer meaning.
The sutras of the Buddha contain countless metaphors. Because mortals have shallow minds,
they don't understand anything deep.
-- Bodhidharma
But thanks to this the form of the teaching is preserved, and once another School surfaces it can take advantage of this form, unlock its hidden meaning and apply it for its own needs.
Myths and symbols are part of the legacy of conscious schools. A new way of looking is required to understand myths and symbols. The intellect is useful and necessary to deal with every day situations and solve complicated problems, but in spiritual matters it falls short. In a state of presence, when the Higher Self is awake, one perceives the meaning directly, without words.
The aim of 'myths' and 'symbols' was to reach man's higher centers, to transmit to him ideas inaccessible to the intellect, and to transmit them in such forms as would exclude the possibility of false interpretations.
-- Ouspensky, quoting Gurdjieff
Understanding of symbols belongs exclusively to higher functions, and must always produce a sense of bafflement, and even frustration, when approached by ordinary functions, such as that of logical thought.
-- Rodney Collin
The ordinary functions refer to the four lower functions or centers of the lower self. Higher functions refer to functions of the Higher Self. Myths, symbols and rituals contain knowledge about the path to awaken the Higher Self. As their inner meaning gradually gets lost, a religion develops in which only the outer meaning is practiced and the conscious school ceases to exist. Over the centuries, some symbols and rituals also enter into the culture that the religion developed in. Once the inner meaning is no longer understood, a new teaching, about awakening the Higher Self arises, which later also gradually develops into a new religion with new myths and symbols, but with the same inner meaning.
Esotericism inevitably founders and degenerates in the course of time,
giving rise to the need for the esoteric impulse to be constantly revivified and redefined.
-- Alex Horn
Is it not a fact that the three doctrines of Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism may be three,
but the Way is ultimately one?
-- Introduction of 'Understanding Reality' by Chang Po-tuan
Ask of those who have attained God; all speak
the same word. All the saints are of one mind; it is only those in the
midst of the way who follow diverse paths. All the enlightened have left
one message; it is only those in the midst of their journey
who hold diverse opinions.
-- Dadu
The Hierarchy is one, and the esoteric sides of all religions were launched by it, as was the great experiment started through Ouspensky and Gurdjieff for our own time.
-- Rodney Collin
This website also shows many examples of symbols from other Esoteric traditions, which have the same inner meaning as the symbols shown of Japanese Esoteric traditions.