Structures of Metaphor: The Symbolic Dimension

To harmonize the whole is the task of art.

(Kandinsky: Concerning the Spiritual in Art: 3)

            A wise mentor once told me, “Don’t think about how to teach, remember how kids learn.”  When we think about this statement, the thought gradually dawns that many so-called learning disabilities are actually teaching disabilities.  The great psychologist Piaget believed: ‘There are no difficult subjects, only subjects taught in a difficult manner.”  I am not trying to beat up on teachers.  By and large they are the most overworked, underpaid and underappreciated workers on the planet.  But we do have to get a clear grasp of how kids learn in order to know how to teach them.  The best way, I believe, is through art.  But by art, I mean not a special skill to learn.  That is the learning of art technique.  I mean art as the Balinese are reputed to have said to some anthropologist: “We have no art.  We do everything as well as we can.” 

            Recent posts have discussed the tool subjects of language and mathematics.  Tool subjects are necessary to learn other subjects.  Art is also a tool subject, but as process of learning.  I mean that the artistic process is tool subject not just for other subjects, but for the Subject.  The gods may have given us words and numbers, but we are born artists and art, too, has its divine connection.  “All art,” writes ‘Abdu’l-Baha, ‘is a gift of the Holy Spirit.  When the light shines through the mind of a musician, it manifests itself in beautiful harmonies.  Again, shining through the mind of a poet, it is seen in fine poetry and poetic prose.  When the Light of the Sun of Truth inspires the mind of a painter, he produces marvelous pictures.  These gifts are fulfilling their highest purpose, when showing forth the praise of God.” (The Chosen Highway:167) 

            The tool subjects of language and math evolve into the two main knowledge systems of religion and science.  But science and religion as systems of knowledge and modalities of knowing are complemented by a third power, art.  Art is not system.  Art is the supreme expression of the symbolic and creative powers of the human spirit.  Science is systematic investigation of the outer world.  It is knowledge of the natural world.  Religion is knowledge of the inner world.  As revelation it is divine or revealed knowledge.  Art is their creative middle.  Art is what we say about ourselves.  It is human knowledge.  Artistic creation is itself the engaged cognitive process. The human process follows the model of the Supreme Artist: “O Son of Man.  Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee, therefore, I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty.”  Love is the fundamental substance of the universe.  Knowledge creates infinite forms from this substance.  The Artist engraves His own image in his work--that is, His work is itself His signature--so we may recognize Him, and reveals His beauty, which is the manifested form of His image, to all creation, so we may know who we are.

            The nature vs. nurture debate is a fuss and feathers controversy, of course, for every nature builds an environment to nurture its further development.  Education is the bringing forth of what is already there, but what is there grows within this form until it ultimately bursts the boundaries of what has been created to bring it forth, and then the process starts again on a higher turn of the spiral.  Our human environment is art.  It is how we nurture ourselves within culture and civilization.

            Art also generates and unifies knowledge.  “The third Tajalli is concerning arts, crafts and sciences. Knowledge is as wings to man's life, and a ladder for his ascent. Its acquisition is incumbent upon everyone.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p. 51) 

            Knowledge, whether religious, scientific or artistic, is structures of metaphor, and their internal form and workings is correlated with what is outside them to produce the symbol, which comes from the Greek sýmbolon, meaning ‘to throw together.”  When humanity separated itself in consciousness from Nature, symbols were invented as a bridge back to nature, but also as a scaffolding to reach unto heaven, the inner world of himself.  His symbols to accomplish this were given humanity by the Great Luminaries of the Spirit, and this process continues.  Symbols link together the spiritual with the material, natural with supernatural. 

            Symbols generated in one structure of knowledge can also be used to make discoveries in the other knowledge structure or in the world.  The architecture of human knowledge is transformation at work, is building the outer supports and enhancements of what is internal to the human spirit, as the light reflecting from the mirror amplifies the general illumination of the sun and enhances its brilliance.  When they are vital, the arts, whether the fine arts, the performing arts or collective arts such as festivals and ceremonials, are signs of an unfolding and corresponding inner attitude.  This attitude is both individual, reflecting the personal vision of the artists, and collective, emblematic of the spirit of the age.  In a famous phrase, the poet T.S. Eliot called such things “objective correlatives.”  These objective forms are symbolic forms, intellectual constructs, and they have their effect.  In his wonderful little book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, the Russian painter Kandinsky writes: “And so we come to the second main result of looking at colors: their psychic effect.  They produce a corresponding spiritual vibration, and it is only as a step towards this spiritual vibration that the elementary physical impression is of importance.” (Kandinsky: 24)  Further he writes that: “art is not vague production, transitory and isolated, but a power which must be directed to the improvement and refinement of the human soul.” (Kandinsky: 54)   Arts, or the symbolic dimension organizing and encoding perceptions of reality, must correctly coordinate human potentials with actuality so the soul may improve and be refined.  This is similar to the Great Learning of Confucian educational theory that I discussed previously.  (Ancient East and Modern West)  New symbols of humanity’s unity to be created by the arts will ennoble and unify human vision, not just reflect current, fragmented vision.  

            The arts will not move to the center of human civilization until they move to the center of the educational curriculum and pedagogy.  That is where they are headed, and:  “Literature, music and art are the first and most sensitive spheres in which this spiritual revolution makes itself felt.” (Concerning the Spiritual in Art:14)