70 § Bonds and Knots
W E have spoken on many occasions of the symbolism of the thread, of which there are multiple aspects, though its essential and strictly metaphysical significance is always the representation of the süträtmä which, both from the macrocosmic and from the microcosmic point of view, links all the states of existence one to another and to their Principle. It is of little importance, in the different forms that this symbolism takes, whether it be a thread in the literal sense, a cord, a chain, or a drawn line such as those already mentioned, [1], or a path made by architectural means as in the case of the labyrinths, [2], a path along which the being has to go from one end to the other in order to reach his goal. What is essential in every case is that the line should be unbroken. The path of the line may be more or less complicated, which usually corresponds to more particular modalities or applications of its general symbolism. Thus the thread, or its equivalent, may double back on itself so as to form intertwinings or knots; and in the structure of the whole, each of these knots represents the point of operation of the forces that determine the condensation and the cohesion of an 'aggregate' corresponding to this or that state of manifestation, so that it could be said that it is this knot which maintains the being in the state in question, and that its 'undoing' immediately brings about the being's death to that state. This is what a term such as 'vital knot' expresses very clearly. Naturally, the fact that the knots relating to different states are represented all at once and permanently in the symbolic drawing must not be regarded as an objection to what we have just said; for apart from the fact that this is obviously necessitated by the technical conditions of the representation itself, in reality it corresponds to the point of view which takes in all the states simultaneously, a point of view which is always more principial than that of succession. We will note in this connection that in the symbolism of weaving, [3], the points of intersection of the threads of the warp and of the woof, by which the entire tissue is formed, also have a similar meaning, these threads being in a way the 'lines of strength' that define the structure of the Cosmos.
In a recent article, [4], Mircea Eliade has spoken of the 'ambivalence' of the symbolism of bonds and knots, and this is a point that deserves to be examined with some attention. Naturally, it is possible to see in this a particular case of that double meaning which is quite generally inherent in symbols; but why it should exist in those particular symbols that we are concerned with here has yet to be grasped. [5] The first thing to be pointed
out in this respect is that a bond can be conceived as that which fetters or as that which unites, and even in ordinary language the word has both these meanings; corresponding to them in the symbolism of bonds, there are two points of view which can be said to be the inverse of one another; and if the most immediately apparent of these two outlooks is that which makes of the bond a fetter, it is because this is the viewpoint of the manifested being as such insofar as he considers himself as 'attached' to certain special conditions of existence and as enclosed by them within the limits of his contingent state. From this same point of view, the meaning of the knot is generally seen as a reinforcement of that of the bond, for, as we said above, the knot represents still more precisely that which fixes the being in a determined state; and the portion of the bond by which the knot is formed is, we might say, all that this being can see of the bond so long as he is incapable of extricating himself from the limits of this state, for the connection that this same bond establishes with other states necessarily still remains beyond the range of his perception. The other point of view may be termed truly universal, for it is the one that embraces the totality of states, and to understand it, we have only to refer to the idea of the sūtrātmā: the ligature, then considered in its full extension, [6], is what unites the multiple states, not only among themselves, but also, we repeat, to their Principle, so that far from being a fetter, it becomes on the contrary the means by which the being can actually rejoin his Principle and the very path that leads him to that goal. In this case, the thread or the cord has a truly axial value and the act of climbing up a vertical rope, or for that matter a tree or a mast, can represent the process of return to the Principle. [7] On the other hand, the connection with the Principle by the sūtrātma is illustrated in a particularly striking way by the play of puppets. [8] A puppet in this context represents an individual being, and the operator who moves it by means of a thread is the Self. Without the thread, the marionette would remain inert just as, without the sūtrātmā, all existence would be pure nothingness and, according to a Far Eastern formula, 'all beings would be empty'.
In the very first of the two points of view of which we have just spoken, a certain ambivalence remains, which results from the different ways in which a being, according to his spiritual degree, can evaluate the state in which he happens to be, an ambivalence which language reflects quite well by the meanings given to the word 'attachment'. In fact, if one experiences attachment for someone or something, one naturally considers it an evil to be
separated from it, even if in reality this separation must entail the emanicipation from certain limitations in which one finds oneself in virtue of this very attachment. More generally, the attachment of a being to his state, at the same time that it prevents him from freeing himself from the fetters that are inherent in this state, makes him consider it a misfortune to leave it; or in other terms, it makes him attribute a 'malefic' character to death to this state, death resulting from the rupture of the 'vital knot' and the dissolution of the aggregate that constitutes his individuality. [9] Only the being who has enough spiritual development to enable him to aspire, on the contrary, to a passage beyond the conditions of his state can 'realise' these conditions as the fetters that in fact they are. Thus the 'detachment' that he henceforth experiences with regard to them is already, at least virtually, a rupture of these fetters, or, to put it differently and perhaps more exactly, for there is never a rupture in the strict sense of the word, a transmutation of 'that which fetters' into 'that which unites', which fundamentally is nothing other than the recognition or the becoming conscious of the true nature of the süträtmä.