4 The Hermit is Separated in order to be Related
When you’ve heard this call then you must find yourself in a new relationship with the world of signs, which is the world of the mind, which is culture and so on. It’s the heart of the eremetic life to be beyond attachment to signs. It’s not that you refuse to use the signs, which would simply be a refusal to communicate, but you know that the signs only exist on one level, that of time and space and form, and God cannot be comprehended by these things, God is beyond that, and the signs point to a reality that is unconditioned.
All signs are governed by cultural conditioning, and for the most part we belong to one particular sign group by accident, seeing that, you must free yourself from attachment to the signs and to your conditioning. This is exactly the relationship Jesus had with the Judaic culture. He had this intimate relationship with God, whom he knew as his Father, and because of that he had a right relationship with the signs, and understood their inner meaning. In Judaism the great sign of God’s covenant with the people was the sabbath, but Jesus would say: ‘The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath’ (Mark 2:27), we could broaden the application and say that the signs were made for man, not man for the signs.
All the religions are signs, but you must go beyond the sign into the heart of reality and if you don’t make that journey, then the sign becomes an encumbrance and not a help. You see it’s when Jesus heals the man with a withered hand in the synagogue on the sabbath, that the Pharisees and the Herodians go out and plot to kill him (Mark 5:1-6).
It’s also at the heart of Eastern spirituality that at a certain stage you pass beyond attachment to the signs, you may have been doing yajña or pūjā at one time, but in these traditions when you have found reality then these things come to an end. That’s why, when a brahmin takes saṁyāsa, he removes the sacred thread, which is the sign of his high status or position in life, and he goes forth naked, beyond all the signs.
Any particular language relates you to some people and divides you from others, so you must be aware of this and its implications; the problem is that signs can divide people, and this is not of minimal importance, something esoteric or intellectual, because all over the world we are seeing an increase in fundamentalism, and people are actually murdering each other because of attachment to a particular sign group. All signs reveal something about reality, but at the same time they conceal or distort something about it also.
There are two mistakes that are made in regard to the world of signs: the first is to attach to them, and put simply, that is idolatry, and the reason people fall into idolatry time and again is that the signs give power and security, and it’s that, not truth, that people seek. Power over signs is power over the world, all knowledge is power. Idolatry is not just this crude idea of worshipping the golden calf, it includes all signs and you must pass beyond them all.
The second mistake is when you think the signs have no relationship to God or to truth, which is a tendency of a certain part of the Vedanta, then the world itself becomes devalued and is seen as māyā, or illusory, a veil covering reality. But my experience is that if you have right relationship then all creation is revealing God’s presence among us.