This is the fourteenth chapter of the book „Viveka – the Voice of Inner Guru. “
The whole book will be tokenized as NFTs on Mirror and, as such, published in 20 articles (20 chapters of the book: The Illusion; India, oh India!; The Accurate description of the Reality; The Crown Jewel; Dead Guru; Living student; Who you?; Leaving the room; The Weakness of the Mind; The Archimedean Point; Three Powers of Maya; Viveka - the Sword of Truth; The Cave of the Mind; Language Can Save Us; Searching for Lakshana; Nine Golden Rules of Viveka; Purification Exercises; What to do with all this?; Dealing with Fear; Ekam Evadvityam: Living without a Center).
Chapter Fourteen: Language Can Save Us
„This Brahman is only one-footed, O Emperor.
The language is its abode, and the space without elements its support.The language is intelligence. Through it a friend is known;all knowledge, mythology, arts, verses, aphorisms, elucidations and explanations,
all actions, this world, and the next, and all beings are known through language alone.“Brhadaranjyaka Upanishad 4.1.2
Language? What language?
Isn't the language just a means of communication? Or, even worse - a source of confusion and misunderstanding? Isn't it true that many wise spiritual people proclaimed the truth unspeakable because words can not express nor convey experiences? How can something superficial, something that divides people, save us from the illusion?
All right, I understand. If you are not a linguist or otherwise specialized academic, you may never come across an idea about language as something more than a sound that carries a meaning. By the way, if that is your definition of language, you should know that you inherited it from Aristotle. But there were many others before him and after him that saw much more in that confusing mish-mash of sounds humans make to communicate daily messages and super deep, rare philosophical insights alike.
Those who thought differently are Indian grammarians, for example, Panini, Bhartrhari, Katyayana, Patanjali, and others whose writings precede Vivekachudamani of Adi Shankara, in some cases for more than a thousand years. Nevertheless, their work and ideas are at the core of viveka methodology, even if Shankara didn't explicitly mention them.
The moto of this chapter taken from Brhadaranjyaka Upanishad (4.1.2) is intriguing, to say the least. The language is intelligence? It is the foot on which Brahman, the Absolute, stands? Everything is know through language alone? What strange ideas!
I could quote some other sources with the same message: „This Brahman indeed shines forth when one speaks with language.“ (Kaushitaki Upanishad, 2.13). Interesting. Can one speak without language? Or the translation went slightly wrong and the meaning is „when one speaks a particular language“? The latter interpretation is not uncommon, especially to those who advocate the special position of Sanskrit language as „divine“ in nature. Its structure is explained in detail in a 5th century BC work Astadhyayi by Panini. And what structure it is! There are forty-nine phonemes, divided into vowels, consonants, and dipthongs or combined vowel sounds. Consonants are of five kinds according to where they are produced (throat, back of the mouth, the roof of the mouth, teeth or lips). There are also five kinds of nasal sounds (and letters) and three forms of sibilants. With around four thousand sutras, Panini described the structure of a „natural language“. The „naturality“ comes from the fact that the structure of the language corresponds with the structure of perceived reality. For example, the phonemes of Sanskrit are sorted by the nature of three gunas, five mahabhutas, ten organs of knowledge and actions (indriyas), and so on.
Do not misunderstand me; I am not fond of the glorification of Sanskrit. I appreciate its antiquity and the fact that it is so refined that it can convey the delicacy of amazing philosophical insights with such ease, maybe better than any other language. But that is not the reason I am writing this. The above description of the innate structure of Sanskrit, truncated as it is, should reveal something else; sharp contrast between the Aristotelian view of language as a sound that carries meaning and a description of a language that corresponds with perceived natural laws.
The sound itself... well, that's another interesting story. Different languages use a vast spectrum of sounds to express underlying meanings. Some Indian grammarians and Sanskrit scholars insist that there are sounds that correspond with ideas (meanings), and there are sounds that do not. The connection of the form (how the word sounds or dhvani) with the content (the meaning of the word or artha) is part of the sabdabrahman (word-absolute) concept. Indian thinkers went very far in that direction and invented a discipline called Vyakaran, to distinguish correct word forms from incorrect ones.
The idea that language is an extraordinary feature of the human mind and requires special attention is also expressed in the oldest texts from Indian culture. Rgveda 1.1.164: „The ultimate abode of language is the Absolute.“
So, what is language, really? Clearly, it's not just any sound that carries a meaning. The sound of words is only a secondary level of language. Perhaps, the reason why language attracted so much attention from philosophers interested in truth and reality lies in the fact language doesn't even have to be expressed with audible words to be language. Language is more about thinking than speaking.
Noam Chomsky, probably the most famous western linguist, suggested that the priorities in the Aristotelian slogan may be reversed, and language would be better understood as “meaning with sound.” Furthermore, you should be aware that most language activities are not externalized. That means we spend much more time thinking than speaking - and we always think by using language. So, you see, if you thought that language is primarily the sound of words, you were wrong. The same would be the case if you thought that the purpose of language is communication. It is not. The purpose of language is thinking.
How language is connected to things or objects of the world and how we actually think about them is a question that has been the major preoccupation of not only Indian but also Western thinkers. Do not forget, when I write „things and objects of the world“ I mean „events and processes in the consciousness“.
From Wilhelm von Humboldt to Jerry Fodor and Noam Chomsky, we can find different expressions of the idea that thoughts and language are the same. Fodor was writing about the cognitive architecture of the human mind embedded in a Language of Thought (LOT), a system of cognitive functions and symbols he calls Mentalese. Chomsky's Universal Grammar reemphasizes the fact that the grammatical rules which regulate the function of the symbols used as elements of language are genetically embedded in the mind/brain.
Of course, Chomsky is a scientific believer, or he just keeps his reputation clean, so he always points out the brain/mind connection. Whatever. The fact is that we think about using certain elements (symbols, word meanings). Without that, thinking would not be possible. Another fact is that the rules of thining are universal (Chomsky) or natural or even „divine“ (Panini and other Indian grammarians). If they are „divine“, who put it there, and why? If they are natural, what kind of processes are behind the formation of such a „universal structure“?
I hope you remember our thought experiment from the previous chapter. We imagined that there is nothing else but consciousness and followed the probable development of the universe of ideas. The initial self-referral process of consciousness becoming aware of its existence triggered the formation of the „divine“ network of fully conscious vantage points. When all those vantage points turned their attention to themselves, the second wave of multiplication started. Since that was a replication of an already existent network, to keep things interesting, that second wave and the continuation of creation required forgetting the oneness of consciousness. The apparent separation of vantage points resulted in a feeling of I-ness and in the development of different tools (bodies) for dealing with a vast amount of events (objects and interactions) going on in the universe of consciousness. At first, the tools were rude and restricted to perception and experiences. Still, after a while, the most important event occurred: the creation of a special faculty of the body of mind and possibly completion of that body – the birth of a language.
With the use of a language (thinking), the forgetful vantage point can remember its true status and possibly start a new wave of creation as an awakened soul.
Before we continue further with the inner investigation of language creation and its possibilities, I want to mention that scientists agree that the appearance of language, and therefore true thinking ability for humans, was sudden and abrupt. It was kind of a quantum leap, not a gradual development. That happened not so far back in our evolutionary history. Paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall dates that abrupt and sudden event within the very narrow window of 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.
We become thinking beings capable of liberation just recently.
Let's continue imagining.
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Welcome back to the cave of the mind! Well, we never left the place, but since we need some time to adjust to the idea that consciousness exists (self-evident fact), and all our experiences (everything else in our reality) are inside it, the occasional reminders are necessary.
The first wave of creation is behind us. The „divine“ network of fully conscious elements is stable and alive. The second wave is also behind us: the vantage points of milliard atmans turned their attention to themselves and thus became lesser creators. The redundancy is not fun for consciousness anymore – the reflection of a reflection of a reflection can go only so far, but not more. There comes a moment when the only solution for continuation is to forget the oneness. The result is illusory separation from the rest of consciousness and the creation of I-ness. By the way, the Sanskrit term for that feeling is ahamkar. So, the first wave of self-referral processes inside the consciousness created your soul – atman, and the second wave created you – ahamkar. While the atman or soul is, for most people, just a legend (the veil of forgetting is too strong), ahamkar or the „I“ is an everyday reality. That is what we think we are. When we say „I“ (and we say that more than any other word) we are referring to ahamkar, the false Self, but the only one we know.
Ahamakar becomes the center of its reality. In the beginning, it just perceives, experiences, and feels. But, the „I“ is the child of consciousness and, as such, requires understanding. The citta element (awareness) of manomayakosha is present before buddhi (understanding). The ahamkar is aware of all experiences through different bodies before he understands them. He is capable of interacting with the environment through the body of food and body of energy. He is capable of experiencing layers of suffering and enjoyment through the body of bliss. Even the vigjanmayakosha, the body of knowledge, is present, although rudimentary in the form of base reactions and primitive learning.
The appearance of buddhi (discerning quality, intellect, language) changes everything. As you will see, that change is for the better and worse.
To understand what is going on, buddhi starts using signs or symbols. When something happens, perception or experience, buddhi creates a sign for that event. Now, another reminder: we are in the cave of the mind. There is nothing around us but ideas. So, the sign buddhi uses is nothing but another idea, an idea about the idea. There should be no difference between one idea inside the consciousness and another created in the same place. And, truly, there isn't. However, for ahamkar, who is already the result of forgetting, the difference is vast. Everything else appears to him as „outside“, and his own thoughts appear to be „inside“.
What just happened is the third wave of creation. Thoughts, language, and ideas „inside the mind“, are all parts of one consciousness, but they appear to be separated and placed inside the mind's container, which belongs to an owner, ahamkar. It is not a true reality, of course. It is an illusion, but nevertheless, an illusion with consequences. I'll come back to the role of Maya in different waves of creation, but let us continue with our analysis of the creation of language.
The signs the mind created (specifically, buddhi, but for the simplicity of it, I'll use the expression „mind“) to represent the events around it were at first simple reflections of those events. Very soon, that becomes overwhelming. If we have the same amount of signs as is the number of events, we can not think about them. We should have fewer signs and the ability to arrange them in multiple ways. The first part of a meta-language created by the mind was the result of an inner connection with the oneness of consciousness which was never severed. The first wave is always here; consciousness is always here, and consciousness does what it always does: it is conscious of itself. The rules of the first wave could be expressed in numbers. One, three, nine, for example. One consciousness, three parts of it (subject, object, channel), nine possible interactions of those three parts (1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, 3-1, 3-2, 3-3). Number 0 for no interactions. Relationships, proportions, the basics of mathematics, but also meta-language.
Next problem: how to express different meanings with as few signs as possible? Words are (simple) ideas and can be combined in sentences (more complex ideas), but the phonemes for creating words should be restricted to numbers. How much is enough? If you are interested, you may dive deep into the grammar of Sanskrit and engage in heated discussions about other languages and their relationship with the first meta-language created by the buddhi. However, that's not our primary focus. We want to understand how language helps in creating the illusion and how it can help to disperse it.
With signs and symbols created by buddhi, ahamkar can now identify the events when they repeat. It is possible to put them in a relationship to other events or use proportions to understand the strength or impact of experiences. The body of knowledge also grows because it is now easier to remember what happened. The ideas are like codes that can invoke reflections of experiences and, in some cases the experiences themselves. It is possible to create ideas not evident from the environment: generalizations, conclusions or classification of events in categories, classes, sub, and supersets. It is also possible to think about all without the „outer“ impressions: anticipate, combine, measure and judge. Because buddhi and manomayakosha reflect the self-referral property of consciousness better than any other body, it is even possible to think about thinking!
Maya equally powers the third wave of creation as the first two. However, in the first wave, Maya is in „divine“ hands. The consciousness is one, not many, but it appears as many due to conscious interaction between different functions of the same consciousness. Maya, that which is not, creates the reflection over reflection in the divine network. Those reflections are inevitable and represent the natural laws that govern our universe, including the illusory reality of a specific ahamkar. Sometimes, that level of Maya is called kalashakti. Probably due to the fact that time and space are one of the basic properties of created reality (kala means time).
The second wave of creation is equally inevitable. The propagation of experiences requires forgetting. Maya is employed by the power of creation to hide the fact that a vantage point is just that, a vantage point, not a new entity. Nevertheless, a vantage point now has the apparent status of a separated being. Atman is not gone, but it is hiding behind ahamkar. That is a critical point: the control over Maya was transferred to an individual.
The third wave of creation, the one that happens inside the manomayakosha of such an individual, is likely to become a misuse of Maya's power. Don't forget that everything is happening inside consciousness. Ideas are forming the experience of reality. The mind seemingly belonging to an ahamkar has the same ability as the consciousness as a whole. Those abilities are somewhat limited due to not remembering the wholeness, but they can grow. Maya's power is enormous, and in the wrong hands can cause a lot of suffering. Ahamkars are prone to wrong motivation because they don't see the bigger picture. Maya is a perfect servant, obeying whatever the master's bidding is. And in the third wave, ahamkars are the masters.
I wrote that the appearance of buddhi (thinking, language) changes everything and that change is for the better and the worst. The role Maya starts to play in creating the realities of different ahamkars is for the worse. Now, what's for the better?
The problem in thinking (language) is complexity. To think (and later speak) about complex ideas, the mind must form large structures, signs, and symbols based on previous experiences, conclusions, and memories transformed into patterns in the „body of knowledge“. To achieve a goal of efficiency, the mind skips a step or two, taking the meaning of particular thought (word) for granted. In other words, the mind operates with constructions. The complexity of construction increases the probability of a mistake. The mistake in the mind is the mistake in reality – an illusion. I'll deal with that (with examples) in the next chapter. It is important to understand that buddhi is a discerning quality of mind. If the mistake is made in meanings, quantities, proportions etc., the buddhi can identify it. That's his job. A corrected mistake is a step towards reality with less illusion. The first stages of purification of buddhi through constant and diligent application of viveka (that means learning how to think properly) will gradually eliminate the illusion from the third wave of creation.
And maybe, when the buddhi is purified enough, he could pierce through the second wave and free the atman from ahamkar. Do not be surprised if that success creates the fourth wave of creation, the one in which Maya returns to the arms of the divine.
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Next Chapter: Searching for Lakshana