The Symbolism of Rivers and the Holy Grail
Introduction
Water is symbolically ‘spirit’.
It can be spirit ‘output’ which symbolically rises and is shown as
Clouds, see our video on Clouds
Mist and rising dew
Spray
Steam
Even fountains and other jets of water
or Spirit Input which symbolically falls onto us from above
and may be shown as Rain
Tears [divine ones]
Snow
But if it falls, what happens to it then?
To find out we need to turn to our diagram of the Mind.
The Chalice
We have used this hourglass shaped diagram
in all our videos to represent the Mind.
It is divided into three.
In the bottom bowl are the Conscious and Subconscious Mind,
in the top bowl we have the Higher spirit
with its composer of dreams, visions and hallucinations.
The Higher spirit is also called the Immortal soul.
Or the Atman or the Buddha nature.
And where are all those arrows from Beyond the Mind
at the very top of the diagram going?
Straight into the top bowl!
And what does this remind you of?
A cup or a goblet maybe?
Perhaps the font in a church?
Or even a beautiful jewel encrusted chalice.
Maybe even THE jewel encrusted chalice
every knight of old searched and longed for
THE HOLY GRAIL
But so few ever realise it is part of themselves
and that with a crown of flowers,
and a pure and open heart it is theirs for the taking.
John Boyle O'Reilly - from Songs, Legends and Ballads
What man would be wise, let him drink of the river
That bears on its bosom the record of time;
A message to him every wave can deliver
To teach him to creep till he knows how to climb;
Who heeds not experience, trust him not; tell him
The scope of one mind can but trifles achieve,
The weakest who draws from the mine will excel him -
The wealth of mankind is the wisdom they leave
The mighty waterfall
Back to the diagram of the Mind and you will see that the Spirit Input
- this river of Wisdom, Intuition, Inspiration, Healing
and prophetic insight now has to reach the bottom bowl.
And symbolically this is seen as a mighty waterfall if we are a mystic
[see video of Horse]
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Over Soul
When I watch the flowing river, which out of regions I see not,
pours for a season its streams into me -
I see that I am ... a surprised spectator of this ethereal water,
that I desire and look up and put myself in the attitude of reception,
but from some alien energy the visions come.
Rivers and streams
Having rushed like a vast waterfall into our mortal minds [the bottom bowl],
we can see - if we follow the blue wavy line
down to its destination in the subconscious
- that it is captured by our sixth sense and perceived as long
as our loud conscious self with its ego, does not overwhelm it.
But this is not the end of this input, as it may now start dividing
into all sorts of rivers that can both help heal us - the meridians
providing a sort of fuel for our bodies,
our nervous system and our other bodily systems.
It is Traditional Chinese medicine [TCM] that calls
these [invisible] lines of delicious cooling input meridians
and they are like a river
in a parched and barren landscape for those who are ill
Because they bring healing to a body that may be on fire.
Although the TCM diagram
only shows the main meridians for clarity’s sake.
The body is actually a great landscape of rivers.
Some vast and wide.
Some imperceptibly small tributaries and branches.
All of which are mirroring the blood stream
and nervous system of the body up to a point.
As traditional healers are often able to discern pools of energy
- spirit input - in areas other than just the glands or organs of the body.
Nadis
The Traditional Indian system of medicine - Ayurvedic
- also uses similar principles.
Vibrational Medicine - Richard Gerber
The nadis are formed by fine threads of subtle energetic matter.
They are an extensive network of fluid like energies
that parallel the body nerves in their abundance.
In the Eastern Yogic literature,
the chakras have been metaphorically visualised as flowers,
whose petals capture the energy.
The nadis are symbolic of the fine roots of the flowerlike chakras
that distribute the life force and energy
of each chakra into the physical body.
Various sources have described up to 72,000 nadis
or etheric channels of energy in the subtle anatomy of humans.
These unique channels are interwoven with the physical nervous system.
Because of this intricate interconnection with the nervous system,
the nadis affect the nature and quality of nerve transmission
within the extensive network of the brain,
spinal cord and peripheral nerves.
Dysfunction at the level of the chakras and nadis can, therefore,
be associated with pathological changes to the nervous system.
A good healer is able to discern
where there are energy blockages,
or energy stagnation
obstructions to the flow
and imbalance so that the flow round the body
via Ida and Pingala is causing illness.
In one of the greatest ironies of modern medicine,
the staff of Hermes - the caduceus
- is used as their insignia,
and it is based on the Ayurvedic system
with Ida, Pingala and Sushumna.
Chandogya Upanishad
A hundred and one are the nadis of the heart,
one of them leads up to the crown of the head.
Going upward through that, one becomes immortal. (CU 8.6.6)
and this clear out of mind and body
to produce a balanced free flowing river
is called the kundalini experience.
Rumi - Rubaiyat
Are you searching for your soul?
Then come out of your prison
Leave the stream and join the river that flows into the ocean.
Absorbed in this world You've made it your burden
Rise above the world There is another vision