on symbols and salvation

"The image of the tree still quite frequently appears in the imaginary universes of the nonreligious man; it is a cipher of his deeper life, of the drama that is plahyed out in his unconscious and that concerns the integrity of his psychomental life and hence his own existence. But as long as the symbol of the tree does not awaken his total consciousness and "open" it to the universe, it cannot be said to have completely fulfilled its function. It has only partly "saved" him from his individual situation -- for example, by enabling him to resolve a deep crisis and restoring his temporarily threatened psychic equilibrium; but it has not yet raise him to spirituality -- that is, it has not succeeded in revealing one of the structures of the real to him."
- The Sacred & the Profane, Mircea Eliade (212)