The Key

Gauracandra · February 12, 2003

I thought this would be interesting. It is a snippet from “The Everlasting Man”. The book was (I believe) what convinced C.S. Lewis to convert from atheism to Christianity. It is designed to explain the superiority of Christianity compared to other faiths. In this regard I think it does a very good job, especially in refuting the notion that other faiths are the same as Christianity.

You can read the entire work here:

http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/books/everlasting_man.html

For this discussion I thought I’d bring up the symbolism of the key. The quote I provide below is only one part and needs to be seen within the entire article.

The key is a very peculiar instrument. Pull out your key and observe it for a moment. Notice the grooves and the edges and the cuts. The key is very simple in that it serves only one purpose, and yet it is very complex in its design. The purpose is to open the door (to heaven). Now we can spend all day long arguing why it is this way, or that way. Why does it cut at this angle and not at that angle. All of that is fairly irrelevant. All that matters is that it opens the door.

But for a key to work, it must retain its shape. For it does have a definite shape. If the teeth break off, or the edges get worn away, or the key bends, it fails to do its one simple task. To open the door. Then one is simply left with a peculiar piece of metal. It is intricate, and detailed, but doesn’t serve any purpose.

Christ founded the Church with two great figures of speech; in the final words to the Apostles who received authority to found it. The first was the phrase about founding it on Peter as on a rock; the second was the symbol of the keys. About the meaning of the former there is naturally no doubt in my own case; but it does not directly affect the argument here save in two more secondary aspects. It is yet another example of a thing that could only fully expand and explain itself afterwards, and even long afterwards. And it is yet another example of something the very reverse of simple and self-evident even in the language, in so far as it described a man as a rock when he had much more the appearance of a reed.

But the other image of the keys has an exactitude that has hardly been exactly noticed. The keys have been conspicuous enough in the art and heraldry of Christendom; but not everyone has noted the peculiar aptness of the allegory. We have now reached the point in history where something must be said of the first appearance and activities of the Church in the Roman Empire; and for that brief description nothing could be more perfect than that ancient metaphor. The Early Christian was very precisely a person carrying about a key, or what he said was a key. The whole Christian movement consisted in claiming to possess that key. It was not merely a vague forward movement, which might be better represented by a battering-ram. It was not something that swept along with it similar or dissimilar things, as does a modern social movement. As we shall see in a moment, it rather definitely refused to do so. It definitely asserted that there was a key and that it possessed that key and that no other key was like it; in that sense it was as narrow as you please. Only it happened to be the key that could unlock the prison of the whole world; and let in the white daylight of liberty.

The creed was like a key in three respects; which can be most conveniently summed up under this symbol. First, a key is above all things a thing with a shape It is a thing that depends entirely upon keeping its shape. The Christian creed is above all things the philosophy of shapes and the enemy of shapelessness. That is where it differs from all that formless infinity, Manichean or Buddhist, which makes a sort of pool of night in the dark heart of Asia; the ideal of uncreating all the creatures. That is where it differs also from the analogous vagueness of mere evolutionism, the idea of creatures constantly losing their shape. A man told that his solitary latchkey had been melted down with a million others into a Buddhistic unity would be annoyed. But a man told that his key was gradually growing and sprouting in his pocket, and branching into new wards or complications, would not be more gratified.

Second, the shape of a key is in itself a rather fantastic shape. A savage who did not know it was a key would have the greatest difficulty in guessing what it could possibly be. And it is fantastic because it is in a sense arbitrary. A key is not a matter of abstractions; in that sense a key is not a matter of argument. It either fits the lock or it does not. It is useless for men to stand disputing over it, considered by itself; or reconstructing it on pure principles of geometry or decorative art. It is senseless for a man to say he would like a simple key; it would be far more sensible to do his best with a crowbar. And thirdly, as the key is necessarily a thing with a pattern, so this was one having in some ways a rather elaborate pattern. When people complain of the religion being so early complicated with theology and things of the kind, they forget that the world had not only got into a hole, but had got into a whole maze of holes and corners. The problem itself was a complicated problem; it did not in the ordinary sense merely involve anything so simple as sin. It was also full of secrets, of unexplored and unfathomable fallacies, of unconscious mental diseases, of dangers in all directions. If the faith had faced the world only with the platitudes about peace and simplicity some moralists would confine it to, it would not have had the faintest effect on that luxurious and labyrinthine lunatic asylum. What it did do we must now roughly describe; it is enough to say here that there was undoubtedly much about the key that seemed complex, indeed there was only one thing about it that was simple. It opened the door.

Gauracandra · February 13, 2003

I find this symbol of the key to be very interesting. When he speaks of the world as having been a lunatic asylum I see that as very true. The world had gotten itself into a whole lot of holes, mental misconceptions, superstitions, dark shadows and such. As a Vaisnava, I see the same thing happening. It is the nature of religions from India to constantly be changing, morphing, branching. It is not that truth does not exist, but that so much untruth exists. At some point your key gets bent, twisted, worn out and all you are left with is a hunk of metal. It may be interesting but it doesn't unlock the door. I think Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur recognized this. He saw that what passed for Vaisnavism (and Gaudiya Vaisnavism) had been corrupted. So he melted down that hunk of metal, with all its twists, and curves, and reforged a new key (taking the essence as we like to say). But again that key started branching, fissuring, twisting, and evolving. Again, I think Srila Prabhupada saw that the Gaudiya Math did not retain its shape. The key was branching, breaking apart. So he reforged again, the essence, into Iskcon. And Iskcon itself has had the same issues and problems. The shape still exists, as it hasn't broken up, but it certainly has strains and twists from its original shape. Srila Prabhupada's original shape did one simple thing - it opened the door. In "The Everlasting Man" it is discussed how the Catholic church died 5 times, and resurrected each time. At some point you need to stop twisting and bending, and reshaping. You have to retain your shape. People can argue all day long, why the shape is the shape it is. But the point is does this complex object do its one simple job - does it unlock the door.

Gauracandra · February 14, 2003

The Christian creed is above all things the philosophy of shapes and the enemy of shapelessness.

One of the great untruths that exists within the world is that the world itself does not exist. The world is simply an illusion. This is such a pernicious untruth that can cause great harm within society. Those who accept this untruth find themselves in an intellectually precarious position. They need to play with words like "The world is real, until you realize it is not real." Such word games are simply a mental disease.

Here is the truth. The world is real. Take your hand and rap your knuckes on your desk. Feel that? That is real. People are real. The world is real. Pain in this world is real. Happiness in this world is real. These things may be temporary but they certainly do exist.

This is one of the great explanations of the distinction between western thought and much of eastern thought.

What does such a thinking do to a society? What sort of hole does it dig one into? If the world is not real, and I simply must realize it is not real, then why invest in the world? I should better just curl up in a corner and close my eyes to the reality of the world.