Metaphor

… metaphor, far from being limited to a linguistic artifact, is characterized by its epistemological function of discovering new meanings. What is at stake is still knowing in process but considered in its nascent moment. In this sense, metaphor is a thought process before being a language process.

Paul Ricoeur

Myth

“[Myth] is the language of imaginative insight into ultimate reality, which not only reveals the truth under a symbol, but also enables those who receive the myth to participate in the experience of the poet or prophet who communicates it.”

Bede Griffiths

Like a drop of water

“It may be that in the state of union, as many mystics have testified, the soul no longer experiences a difference between itself and God, but the difference remains. The very purpose of creation was that other beings, both men and angels, and through them the whole creation, should participate each in its own unique way in the one being of God. The state of union is often illustrated by saying that it is like a drop of water merging in the ocean, but it can equally be said that it is like the ocean present in the drop. In the ultimate reality, the whole is present in every part and every part parcipates in the being of the whole.”

Bede Griffiths

Individuality?

“But the soul that enters into this state of bliss (saccidananda) does not lose its individual being. It participates in the state of universal being and consciousness, it enjoys perfect bliss, but that personal being which was conferred on it by creation, that unique mode of participation in the divine being, which constitutes it as a person, is eternal.”

Bede Griffiths

Saccidananda

“There are schools of Hindu thought which consider that when the spirit of man (the Jivatman) is thus united with the spirit of God (the paramatman), the individuality is lost. But this is not necessarily so. It is true that the individual soul ceases to exist as a separate being. It is transfigured by the light and participates in the very being and consciousness of God. This is the state of saccidananda, the state of being (sat) in pure consciousness (cit), in which is found absolute bliss (ananda).”

Bede Griffiths

Contemplation

“Contemplation is a habit of mind which enables the soul to keep in a state of recollection in the presence of God whatever may be the work with which we are occupied.”

Bede Griffiths

Marriage

“The whole of Christianity really centres on this transformation of human love which is brought about by the love of Christ. In Christian marriage man and woman can really love one another with an infinite love, because each gives himself to Christ in the other. This is the total sacrifice of love for which our nature craves. Like everything else in Christianity it is a sacramental love; it is a revelation of the Spirit in the flesh. In this relation sex becomes what it was always intended to be, a symbol or sacramental sign of love. The union of spirits is brought about by the union of flesh.”

Bede Griffiths