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FROM A SITE VISITOR: What does it matter if I use the term “God” as long as I know it refers to Brahma or even Brahman?
ANOTHER: You mentioned in an e-mail to my friend a vocabulary of realization and an Advaita-style vocabulary of sanity and non-delusion. Explain, please.
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F.: Maharaj shared pointers in regards to the use of certain words and language, touting exactness in word choice even as he endorsed silence over talk. [As the silence becomes the typical marker among the Realized, there are fewer and fewer words used at all, but the ones used never support any “notions of two-ness” and always support the “not-two” understanding instead.]
For instance, when the Realized use the word “I,” that word has nothing at all to do with the first person, singular, nominative case, personal pronoun. (For a detailed explanation, see the 15 August 2007 post.)
Furthermore, no Fully Realized Advaitin would make any claim about being either “Fully Realized” or being “an Advaitin.” That is all “early-on-the-‘path’” talk, and some latitude is required in order for any communication to take place between seeker and teacher during the early stages. [Later, it is even realized that there are neither seekers nor teachers.]
Exceptions can especially be the case when dealing with those in the West who have very little exposure to even the most basic terminology required for the transmission of the teachings, including words and phrases such as “false self,” “True Self,” “the Absolute as opposed to the relative,” “de-accumulation,” etc., all of which are alien to those programmed in cultures of accumulation. To even speak to them of "a false self" or of "de-accumulation" is typically greeted with all the enthusiasm surrounding a case of influenza.
Yet even among Easterners, many misunderstand the most basic teachings. Maharaj said to one seeker, “We are not speaking the same language. Yours is a make-believe talk….” He informed one seeker, “You speak as a person, limited in time and space, reduced to the contents of a body and a mind.”
Because thoughts (the content of the mind) control words and because words—in turn—control deeds, then the words used during the relative existence exert tremendous influence over behavior among non-Realized persons.
For example, certain racist men living in Jasper,
Eventually, their deed followed: three of those men would kidnap a black man, Richard Byrd, Jr., and would take him to an isolated area nearby. There, they beat him, chained him to a pickup truck, and dragged him behind the vehicle for two miles. In the process of killing him in that manner, they tore off his head, his neck and his right arm.
THEIR THOUGHT: Whites are better than blacks.
THEIR WORDS: “We are better than black people. They are inferior to us.”
THEIR DEED: The murder of a black man.
All deeds are directly preceded by words, and all words are preceded by thoughts. Is it no wonder that Maharaj cautioned against the careless use of language? Yet do not conclude that 50% of all actions result from thoughts and 50% from words.
Nonsensical talk could not happen were it not for the nonsense stored in “the mind” that is constantly cycled and recycled among the non-Realized as thought after thought after thought. That is why one of the books below is entitled THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS “PEACE OF MIND” (There is Only Peace If You’re Out of Your Mind).
Additionally, there is no need to cut off the tongue and lips and discard them in order to put an end to the nonsense being verbalized millions of times per day across the planet. The requirement is to cut out the nonsensical thinking by discarding the contents of “the mind.” When nonsense is eliminated at the source (called “the mind”) then it cannot manifest via the mouth.
If there is no constant running of the mind, then there can be no constant running of the mouth. Is it becoming clear why the Realized spend so much time in the silence?
Is it clear that those who have to talk the most are the most removed from Reality? Is it clear why the truth can be known but cannot be spoken? Is it clear, therefore, why most of what is spoken is to be ignored because it is false?
For nonsensical words and deeds to end, persons must be rid of belief in the concepts and ideas that generate the thinking which leads to nonsensical talking and nonsensical behaviors. Yet in cultures where “freedom of speech” is endorsed over freedom of silence—such as in the
In the “war on nonsense,” one suggestion to those taking the seven steps to Realization is this: simultaneously become consciousness of the words that are spoken while sleepwalking and while trying to awake.
By that means, there can be launched a two-fold assault on babble and claptrap—attacking the base of nonsense (“the mind”) as well as the nonsense being spoken by persons who are out on patrol each day and spreading foolishness in a verbal fashion as they go.
One student of the teachings offered by Maharaj was named Ruiz. He chose to focus on only a few aspects of the teachings in particular (the case with so many currently on the circuit who also studied the pointers offered by Maharaj and then selected a few as their own and are now marketing a narrow, limited, and incomplete version of the teachings).
One of the teachings that Ruiz focuses on is the suggestion to practice impeccability in word choice. There is what might be termed “A Vocabulary of Realization,” which is in one sense an “exclusive” vocabulary rather than an all-inclusive vocabulary. It is a vocabulary this is limited to the use of non-dualistic words and terms.
The Fully Realized Advaitin, for example, will not speak of something being “good” or being “bad”; nor will there be talk of one thing or person being “better than another”; nor will there be any speaking about “ownership,” about “gain or loss,” or about “possessions” as implied with terms such as “my wife” or “my husband.”
[Exceptions can happen when communicating with a seeker not yet Fully Realized and not yet familiar with The Vocabulary of Realization, but in the end, all will be made clear if the seeker travels the entire “path” with the teacher.]
In that regard, there is no difference in using the dualistic term “good” and in using the term raised in the first e-mail above that evolved from the word “good,” specifically, “god.” In Anglo-Saxon, the word for “good” was “gud” or “gad.”
At best, the word “God” with an uppercase “G” might point toward some “divine goodness”; however, if you adhere to the Advaita teachings, you will not speak of any dualities including “divine vs. earthly” or “good vs. bad.”
If you move beyond the Germanic root of the word god” and study the Indo-European root, you will find a
For the rest of the specks of consciousness that speak with "impeccability," the word “God” is not in the vocabulary of those currently manifested specks. [An upcoming series will address the practice of invoking “God” and “turning it over to God.” The Realized, though, see the folly behind such concepts.] Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)
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