This parable has caused disappointment, even outrage to many. It is that all parables are incomprehensible and paradoxical when viewed from the perspective of analytical intelligence. The parables are born from spiritual intuition, and only from this perspective can they really be comprehended. And spiritual intuition is a trance that only the mind removed from the turmoil of life can grasp. It is not imagination, which many confuse with intuition, but it is a state of communion with the creative and divine aura that surrounds us, an inner vision of peace and silence that seems to be an external invasion; it is an unexpected illumination, almost an ecstasy, in Einstein's words.
The text, mentioned by Matthew and Mark is well known: One day Jesus walked with his disciples and came across a fig tree by the road that he approached looking for its fruits. But he found no fruit, for it was not the season for figs. The cultivated fig tree produces figs in spring or summer; in other seasons it loses leaves and does not produce.
Jesus saw that the fig tree was covered with leaves and had hoped to find fruits, but found none, because it was not the season for figs, and said: "No one ever eats the fruit from you."
Instantly, the fig tree began to wither.
The next day, Jesus and his disciples went down to the same road, and the disciples seeing the fig tree exclaimed: "Rabbi, look at how it dried quickly".
Any profane man, especially the scholar one would have said, "What a grouchy fellow this Jesus ... to take revenge on an innocent fig tree for the fact that it did not bear fruit when according to the laws of nature, it could not even produce them."
The parable of the fig tree, which symbolizes man, had foliage without fruit, a sign that it was not true to its nature.
In nonhuman nature, no such phenomenon occurs, since the laws of nature instinctively obey the order of Cosmic Intelligence. In human nature, however, this paradox can happen; much foliage without fruit, many exteriorities, no interiority, much brightness on the outside, but opaque on the inside.
Since the spiritual symbol in the parable is aimed at man, it follows that Jesus refers to a fruitful human being in the things of the external ego and infertile in his inner Self. The curse, therefore, does not refer to the material symbol of the fig tree, but the spiritual symbolized of the fig tree, to the spiritually sterile man.
The English philosopher Bertrand Russell, in his book, Why I Am Not Christian, did not comprehend this mystical sense of the parable and censored Jesus by cursing an innocent plant.
This disappointment of the profane man is comprehensible. But the error lies precisely in this level of his ignorance. The parable focuses on the material level and goes to the spiritual one. It is evident that, on the material level of the symbol, the fig tree had no alternative but to infertility. In this level there is no blame and no curse on it; the fig tree did what it could do according to the laws of nature.
Quite different is the case on the spiritual level of the symbolized, the only level that allows true comprehension.
A man endowed with free will not only have a possibility of being fruitful under favourable conditions; can be fruitful also in unfavourable circumstances. Man, thanks to his free will, transcends the laws of nature; he can produce good fruit both in good times, when he is surrounded by favourable circumstances - and also in bad times when he is surrounded by adverse conditions, even when it seems impossible to be good. Man is not necessarily the product of the environment in which he lives, and if so, proves to be defeated by external circumstances. He who is good in good times is precariously good - but he who is good in bad times is heroically good. He who bears fruit when it is time for fruit is a virtuous man - but he who bears fruit when, under the circumstances, is not fruit season, he is a wise man, a perfect man, a Christlike man. Being good to the good ones is easy. Being good among the bad is difficult.
The great spiritual Masters of humanity do not sympathize with certain virtuous who are good among the good; but with the heroes of wisdom, who is good in the midst of evil, pure among unclean, free in the midst of slaves, light in the midst of darkness.
The soul of the parable is the spiritual symbolized and not the material symbol. At the level of the spiritual symbolized, there is always the possibility of producing fruit out of season, despite the adversities of nature and the wickedness of men. If the Kingdom of Heaven was the dwelling of those who fruit in a propitious and easy time, heaven would be populated with cowards and settled. But true heaven, which is within every man is not for the accommodated, the cowards, the mediocre, the hypocrites; the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and only those who provoke violence against themselves assault it as if it were a seemingly impregnable fortress.
The parable stresses the need for the truly spiritual man - the one stripped of ego - to emancipate himself from the tyranny of human circumstances and to proclaim the sovereignty of his divine essence.
In the end, Jesus adds that those who have faith, faithfulness, perfect harmony with the world of divine reality, will do more than he did with the fig tree, making it dry immediately; this man may even move mountains by the power of the spirit. "Everything is possible to him who has faith", to the man who is really identified with the soul of the Universe, whose omnipotence is shared by man attuned to the soul of Divinity.
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