Language & Mystical Evolution: We May Be Evolving Faster Than We Think
by swampgirl
Date: 14 Dec 1995 23:57:34 GMT
Language is usually thought of as a tool devised by humans to communicate with one another. Sometimes language serves to transfer information, and sometimes its function is to convey thought, feeling, or intention. But there is another dimension of language which borders on the unknown: the spiritual aspect. In ancient and prehistoric cultures, tribal man was in close contact with the spiritual world, largely through the intermediary of the local shaman. Magical plants and special language were at the core of the shamanistic practice, enabling Man to approach the realm of the Unexplainable. Although modern man seems to have lost this spiritual contact, the advent of electronic communications and the synthetic replication of "reality" through mathematical formula may be bringing us closer to the tribal state of mind. We may possibly even be witnessing the most important evolution of language since the appearance of alphabetic writing! My paper will be based around the contention that there is a fundamental link between linguistic evolution and the spiritual state of man.
Most often, the "spiritual element" of language that I'm speaking of comes in the form of mystics using special words (or special combinations thereof) in an attempt to communicate with the spiritual world. But in the case of the Kabbalists, a branch of Jewish mysticism, it goes even one step further. The biblical theory, known as the fiat concept, holds that divine speech actually called the universe into being- or rather, that it acted as an organising principle in the midst of chaos: "Now the earth was a formless void... God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light... God divided light from darkness. God called light "day', and darkness he called 'night'. One has the impression that the void would have remained had God not spoken, and the importance of language is obvious when the first thing He does after seperating light from darkness is name them. Another form of this theory is "that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet entered the process of creation not only as creative forces but also as the elements of its material structure." There are at least two versions of this theory: the first is that the creation of the universe came about when God took the twenty-two letters of the alphabet and "combinated them in all possible permutations of two letters." The second is that God actually consulted Torah as a model, using "the universe of language" as "the blueprint of the material cosmos." In other words, the sacred structure of language would have existed before the Universe as we know it.
The so-called "Ecstatic" branch of Kabbalism uses the concentrated pronunciation of divine names in order to have acoustic contact with divine energy. As with the eighteenth-century Polish Hasidic concept, the words must be pronounced in a distinct way so as to keep prayer from becoming a purely mental activity. Whereas many types of mysticism emphasise the experience of visions, these mystics are seeking an essentially auditory experience. Language becomes a sort of "vessel wherein the divine influx dwells," a place to which divine energy can be attracted in order to bring man into communion with the Infinite. Language thus bridges the gap between God and Humanity.
This talismanic concept of language as "vessel" is more widely associated with witchcraft. Jeanne Favret-Saada, who did research on the subject, says, "...the act, in witchcraft, is the word...witchcraft is spoken words; but these spoken words are power, and not knowledge or information." Witches using spells to "trap" the energy of spirits is usually seen in a negative light, but we see here that the Ecstatic Kabbalists employ practically the same method. The major difference is that the kabbalist is attempting to commune with God, this supernatural energy, whereas the witch is trying to accomplish her own ends by harnessing it. There is also the question of what kind of energy is being harnessed: is it the powers of light or darkness? Can white magic be placed in the same category as Ecstatic Kabbalism?
One could conceive of the use of mantras in Hinduism and Buddhism as a similar attempt at creating a linguistic "sound trap" for the Divine. In some respect, of course, it is. But like the kabbalists, the eastern use of mantras places an emphasis on personal spiritual development through concentration and meditation- something that is different from the empty appropriation of the witch, who may not have a full understanding of the energy she is using. Mantras don't necessarily mean anything, although it is always possible to invest them with specific symbolic meanings. As Katz says, "Om does not "say" something, does not "tell" something, but it does something." Mantras are meant to be used as tools in meditation, therefore, in theory, any word could be used as a mantra. Since most words have connotations, a mantra could be chosen in function of the desired goal: for example, as an angry person repeats to himself, "Calm down, calm down..." But when it is the indefinable Void that is being sought, the best mantras are those that are essentially pure sound. Frits Staal, author of Exploring Mysticism, says that mantras "assume sounds and shapes so different from anything found in natural Indian languages that their literal meaningless is apparent."
Another linguistic device, used in Zen Buddhism, is the koan. By using the koan in the context of meditation, when the ego is the most sensitive, the master encourages a transformation of consciousness in his pupils so that they can "break free of and transcend the regulative categories of knowing," thereby opening them up to "new forms of awareness that are conducive to, and permit, satori." The koan is defined by "paradox or absurdity"; the example Katz gives is "the sound of one hand clapping." He identifies the practice of meditating on the koan as "the conscious construction of paradoxes whose necessary violation of the laws of logic are intended to shock, even shatter, the standard epistemic security of 'disciples,' thereby allowing them to move to new and higher forms of insight/knowledge." Like Surrealism, the purpose of the koan is "to force the hearers of such propositions to consider who they are- to locate themselves vis-a-vis normal versus transcendental "reality."
We have seen that the intention of Hinduist, Buddhist, and Kabbalistic meditation is to attempt a connection with God. If we flip this idea around, we can imagine the phenomenon of "speaking in tongues," or glossolalia, as an attempt by God to get in touch with the human being. In the Bible there are several instances of this occurring: In Acts 19:6, Paul lays his hands on the disciples of John at Ephesus: "the Holy Spirit came down on them, and they began to speak with tongues and to prophesy." In the story of Pentecost, the apostles "were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak different languages as the Spirit gave them power to express themselves." When the men living in Jerusalem, who were from many different nations, heard them, they were astonished to find that the apostles were speaking their languages. "Everyone was amazed and perplexed; they asked one another what it all meant. Some, however, laughed it off. 'They have been drinking too much new wine,' they said."
In a 1985 interview by Michael Toms for his "New Dimensions" radio show, he talks with Terence McKenna ("Scholar, theoritician, explorer, dreamer, pioneer, fanatic, and spellbinder, as well as ontological tailor,")
MT: You suggest that the world is made of language, yet I think of these extraordinary realities that are totally beyond any language that we use in the ordinary sense.
TM: Yes, they are beyond ordinary language. I always think of Philo Judaeus ["an Alexandrian Jew of the second century who made it his business to travel around the Hellenistic world discussing all the major cults and religious theories and cosmogonic theories of his day...a major source of Hellenistic data" -TM] writing on the Logos. He posed to himself the question, "What would be a more perfect Logos?" and then answered, saying it would be a Logos that its not heard but beheld. And he imagined a form of communication where the ears would not be the primary receptors, but the eyes would be. A language where meaning was not constructed through a dictionary of spoken words, but where three-dimensional objects were actually generated with a kind of hyperlanguage so that there was perfect understanding between people. This may sound bizarre in ordinary reality, but these forms of synesthesia and synesthesic glossolalia are commonplace in psychedelic states.
The "psychedelic states" McKenna is speaking of refer directly to the shamanistic practices of Indian tribes in the Amazon who ingest certain "magic plants" as part of their traditional chanting rituals. In these rituals, a sort of "group mind" is formed through the concentrated pronunciation of words- a bit like the Ecstatic Kabbalists. While under the effects of the plant, each member of the group experiences the same three-dimensional vision in which "thoughts...condense as visual objects." McKenna describes "a situation where, using voice, one can create three-dimensional colored modalities that have linguistic content. This visible language can be displayed to a partner who is in the same state. It is as though language has a potential that is only rarely expressed." He further clarifies the phenomenon by sharing his own experience of it: "The Logos is capable of going from a thing heard to a thing seen, without ever crossing through a discernible transition point. This seems a logical impossibility; yet when one actually has the experience one sees-aha!-it is as though thought that is heard does become something seen. The thought that is heard becomes more and more intense until, finally, its intensity is such that, with no transition, one is now beholding it in three-dimensional, visual space." In McKenna's view, this chanting works together with the magical properties of the plants to effect physiological change in the indians- a strange state of simultaneous biological and spiritual evolution. McKenna believes that the evolution of spiritual consciousness is, by definition, a biological evolution of the human species. He also believes that language as we know it is rapidly evolving towards the ideal of Philo Judaeus- "a Logos that is not heard but beheld."
If McKenna's hypothesis is correct, the origins of man are wrapped up in this concept of "visual language." We know that in the primitive societies of the Incas, the Persians, and the Chinese that knotted cords were used as a visual form of "language." Likewise, the North American Indians used wampum beads and pictograms to convey meaning. From these pictograms, which only depicted objects, language evolved into the ideogram, which used a simplified picture to stand for a complex idea. These pictures surmounted the language barrier, but were often misinterpreted because they didn't actually record words. Anthony Burgess, who created his own working language in A Clockwork Orange, makes the obvious but often neglected observation that "pictograms probably arose only as reminders, signs of ownership, commemorative inscriptions. Consider how little urge there would be to make inscriptions at all when there were only stones and chisels as writing implements." These simple pictograms and logograms have since evolved- the Chinese and the Ancient Egyptians were able to express increasingly abstract concepts by combining symbols- but the problem of tense displacement led to the use of other forms (such as syllabic and alphabetic.)
Let's cut to the present for a moment. The modern use of alphabetic writing, it would seem, is taking a back seat to the image. As Anthony Burgess remarks, "...we had better note how unalphabetic the world of applied science is becoming. The remote control we use for changing television channels does not have alphabetisc signs on its face, and our travel along motorways or even through city streets meets more non-alphabetic signals than plain words. The H signifying the way to a hospital may seem to bow to the alphabet, but not on Italian roads. The Italian for 'hospital' is ospedale: there is no H there." He goes on to give examples of public restroom logos and traffic signs. Once one begins to watch out for modern ideograms and logos, one realizes that they are everywhere- and there always seem to be more of them! In fact, the Windows 6 application I'm typing this paper on uses a simple system of visual signs called "icons." On page 185 of Aspects of Language, Bolinger says, "If we knew what the outcome of the next 10,000 years of evolution was going to be, we could measure the factors existing now that are leading to it, but in our ignorance we are unable to mark the signals that are the signs of progress." Bolinger may have spoken too soon. On page 275, he gives a list of reasons why speech was superceded by the written word. What he fails to observe is that the same reasons could be given for the replacement of writing by the visual symbol: the first function of writing was communication across time- impossible for speech until the invention of sound recording devices. The second function was communication across great distance- "likewise impossible for speech until the development of the telephone." The third function of writing was communication to great numbers of people- "closed to speech until the invention of the radio." Since we now have all of these inventions- recording devices, telephone and radio- mankind seems to be ready to make the move back- or forward- to vocal/visual language. (Think back to the chanting rituals of the Amazon tribes, whose chanting was also experienced visually.) The example Bolinger gives of newspapers, whose increasingly larger readership requires them "to transcend local dialects and adhere to a standard that can be widely understood," supports the return to a universal visual system. Besides, as McLuhan points out, "Today computers hold out the promise of a means of instant translation of any code or language into any other code or language. " He goes on: "The computer, in short, promises by technology a Pentecostal condition of universal understanding and unity. The next logical step would seem to be, not to translate, but to by-pass languages in favor of a general cosmic consciousness which might be very like the collective unconscious dreamt of by Bergson." If, like the French philosopher Henri Bergson, we think of language as "a human technology that has impaired and diminished the values of the collective unconscious"; if we can see that language is "the extension of man in speech that enables the intellect to detach itself from the vastly wider reality," we may consider that the primitive desire to designate possessions and to remember the past (as opposed to living in the Now) are both attempts to define the Self. Man, even "modern" man thus creates his ego boundaries, moving away from the state of Collective Consciousness. For me, this is the "fall of man;" not in fact the fault of man, but simply the original seperation of Man from what we call God. History is the living out of this adventure, and language is the expression of it. Mankind is currently pushing the limits of the impossible. In fact, we may be evolving faster than we think.
1 Genesis I: 2-5, The New Jerusalem Bible, Reader's Edition , Doubleday, 1990.
2 G. Scholem, "The Name of God and the Linguistic of the Kabbala," Diogenes 79(1972): 71, as cited by Steven Katz in Mysticism and Language, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, p.47.
3 Katz, p. 47.
4 Katz, p. 45.
5 Katz, p. 56
6Katz, p. 10
7 Frits Staal, Exploring Mysticism, Harmondsworth, 1975, pp. 44-51, as cited by Katz.
8 Katz, p. 6.
9 Ibid.
10 Katz, pp. 7-8
11 Acts 2:12-13, The New Jerusalem Bible.
12 Tom Robbins, foreword to The Archaic Revival, by Terence McKenna, San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991.
13 McKenna, The Archaic Revival, p. 162.
14 McKenna, p. 62.
15 McKenna, p. 53.
16 McKenna, p. 99.
17 Dwight Bolinger and Donald A. Sears, Aspects of Language, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981, p. 286.
18 Anthony Burgess, A Mouthful of Air: Language & Languages, Especially English, London: Hutchinson, 1992, from chapter 8, entitled "The Ear Becomes The Eye."
19 Burgess, from chapter 8.
20 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, Abacus, 1973, p.90.
21Marshall McLuhan, p. 89.