As a keen watcher of golf, I am relishing four days glued to my TV to watch sportsmen at the top of their game exhibit their prowess (and see how they fare against the legendary Scottish deep rough, which is sure to yield plenty of shankers), as well as beautiful scenery of Turnberry with its coastal views, especially of Ailsa Craig.

I checked out the official Open Golf website and was bowled over by the video content available portraying The Open Championship; and the tournament hasn’t even started yet!

They’ve got online videos of press conferences with the golfers, the organisers, helpers such as the Met Office, the course and its environment. Now that’s what I call not just a service to golf fans, but to the web.

Of, course, I’m aware of the phrase “too much information”, but if the information’s available, it’s open to people to provide it, then for individuals to find what is useful to them whilst filtering through the junk. That’s the beauty of the internet, and also the human mind.

Unbeknownst to most web surfers, the world’s most powerful search engine, Google, has the ability to search audio content embedded within online videos. When you search for current events topics on Google, Youtube almost always appears on the first page of search results. Ever wondered why? Well, now you know why: Google not only indexes Youtube’s (and most online video providers’) video’s titles, they search through their audio content to identify keywords and phrases and match them to their users search terms. The most popular and relevant search words and search terms appear higher in the search rankings. So, whoever is responsible for the Open Golf’s website has set the site up well for search engines to recognise and rank highly key golfing terms, either within text content or video content.

I like Tiger Woods and wood (sorry!) love to see him smash some records, but I also love it when a rank outsider bags the most prestigious of golf tournaments in spite of the bookie’s odds. Golf’s an awesome pursuit and like a true neutral I’d always say that golf’s the winner. But…

…Go Padraig Harrington! 3 in a row. It’s never done before!

Having been to the Scottish Open at Loch Lomond a few tmes I know how exciting (and sometimes relaxing) attending live golf tournamant can be. However, I’ll be glued to my TV or watch the highlights online. Even though it’s only 60 miles down the road from me, I can’t face the traffic or the parking.

“See it all, till tomorrow”

A colleague of mine once uttered these words. I don’t believe he intended them to become legendary, but within my circle of friends they most certainly are and, I think, rightly so.

What is a word anyway?

Words are abstract constructs. Their substance has no relevance to their meaning. By that I mean that a sound, letter, phoneme, morpheme or word has no intrinsic meaning attached to it save that which the human mind attributes to it. “Walk” could mean the same as “run”, but why doesn’t it? It’s because we have created a different meaning for each. As we grow up from childhood, we learn that different sounds have different meanings, and so we accept these sound-meaning relationships without question. When we learn a language, we are conditioned to associate certain sounds with certain meanings.

Some words are spelled and pronounced the same but can have many different meanings, for example, the word “bank”. How we differentiate contextual meanings with multi-meaning words is an on-going hot topic amongst linguists and lexicographers, but that’s for another post…

Although words are abstract constructs, the association between the sound of a letter or mixture of letters (words), has become entrenched in our understanding of words and how they are used in conjunction with each other to form meaningful sentences, which in turn help us to convey ideas and concepts, although the extent of how much we can convey meaning is extremely limited. This process forms the basis of all our written and oral communication.

Certain words, regardless of language, are similar in different languages.

How can this be? All languages are categorised into families and hence, have hereditary traits. For millennia, people have migrated from country to country, continent to continent. During this, cultures mingled and languages merged. There is no such thing as a pure race. We are all of each other.

Because of this migration, neighbouring cultures share similar language traits. The scale of this is huge. For example, some members of Siberian tribes crossed over the ancient land bridge between far Eastern Russia and Alaska and migrated to South America, and now some South American cultures share some language traits with those still spoken in Russia.

However, this epic fact doesn’t negate the fact that words are dodgy things. What does dodgy mean? Well, it can mean “deceiving”. We may not mean to deceive when we use words, but it is often an un-meant and un-desired side-effect, even when we think we have chosen our words with care. Like it or not, this is inevitable, so it means we have to take special care in choosing the words we use.

As I see it, every human being likes and deserves to be treated with decency. Isn’t this a basic human right? The words we use go a long way, and their impact is vastly underestimated by many people. We shouldn’t think just of how we think we would like to be spoken to, but, more importantly, how we think someone else would like to be spoken to. To achieve this demands supreme concentration and dedication. This one of the reasons why Gautama Buddha rated Right Speech as one of the most important things a human being must pay special attention to and try to master. Try it for just one day and you’ll soon see how difficult it is. You will feel a sense of achievement even in trying. But, persevere: you and those around you will benefit enormously. For my partial take on Right Speech see Part 2 of my article The Unfolding Script of Speech and Language.

One problem with words is that once we crystallise our thoughts into words, the subtleties of meaning become lost or distorted very easily. When we speak or write, how often are we happy that what we have communicated is what we were really thinking? Once we communicate via words, we are, to a degree, at the mercy of the listener or reader’s understanding and perception.

From my point of view, this goes right to the heart of the problem of language: language, written or spoken, plays second fiddle to thought. Thoughts are far superior in accuracy, potency and meaning compared to written or spoken language.

So how is all this relevant in our daily lives?

For most of us, not a day passes when we don’t use either the written word or spoken word. Imagine you had only 100 words (it may seem a lot, but it really isn’t) to use, either written or spoken, each day.

You’d soon learn to choose them pretty carefully.

“See it all, till tomorrow”

An English professor wrote the words:

‘A woman without her man is nothing’ on the chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly*.

All of the males in the class wrote:

‘A woman, without her man, is nothing.’

All the females in the class wrote:

‘A woman: without her, man is nothing.’

I’ve been planning to write a post on the importance of spelling and punctuation for a while, and this has spurred me on to get it written and posted, so stay tuned!

But until then…

As I read and re-read this anecdote, I got thinking about how we punctuate not just our writing, but also our speech. How would you speak both of the above lines to convey the meaning of their written punctuation? Try speaking both out loud to someone and see if they can grasp the different meanings you’re trying to get across.

OK! Technical stuff coming up!

The key lies in emphasising specific morphemes**,  where to put pauses and how long to pause. It’s got to be perfect, like comic timing, for it to work.

When we speak a polysyllabic word, we can emphasise whatever morpheme or syllable we choose to change the importance of what part of the word we are speaking. It can even change the meaning of an entire phrase, sentence, or diatribe.

The simplistic beauty of this is that the meaning of the word as a whole remains intact, but that meaning is altered subtly but powerfully by what morpheme we choose to emphasise.

This is a very strong force in speech. Whether we write or speak, to quote Obi Wan Kenobi in Star Wars when about to enter a dangerous scenario, “we must be cautious.”

*The use of the word “correctly” in this anecdote is interesting. There is no correct punctuation unless we know the context of the sentence. Without context, it’s entirely open to interpretation.

**A morpheme is a part of a word, often a syllable, that has meaning and also forms a part of a word. I couldn’t be bothered thinking up my own example, so here’s an explanation I’ve adapted from Wikipedia:

The word “unbreakable” has three morphemes: “un”, “break”, and “able”. Each one has a different meaning, but when put together in this order forms a new word.

“See it all, till tomorrow”

I was trying to get across the idea that personal connections and communications in real life are a very important but perhaps dwindling phenomenon, and it tends to get left by the wayside if internet communication takes over.  Locked away in our houses, so many of us habitually “plug in” to the internet and close the doors to the outside world and our fellow man. Oft-times, internet communication can be a fairly inhuman, unemotional affair.

However, that is not always the case.

I hate the internet. But, I also love it. Why?

I hate it because it can be so impersonal; meanings get distorted, it’s a melée of irrational, irrelevant information (a bit like our everyday thought processes actually), and it’s addictive.

I love it because it’s a wealth of information available in seconds, it avails us details not covered in the mainstream, and it helps brings people together.

So, what has this got to do with the fellow that said “hello” to me?

I have friends that live many thousands of miles away from me. But when I get an e-mail from them I rejoice. An e-mail, or instant message can be just as powerful emotionally as a face-to-face encounter. They can uplift us, inspire us, or just simply make us feel connected.

Of course, I’m not alone in this as most of us who have internet connections are used to it now (believe it or not, there are those in the world who don’t!). But, I still get a tingle sometimes when I get an e-mail from a friend in California or New Zealand (I’m in Scotland.)

So, I’m not dissing internet communication or advocating ditching it in favour of going out for a walk and saying “hi” to everyone you meet.

Anything goes!

The key is striking a balance.

“See it all, till tomorrow”

The written equivalent is the simple question mark? However, there is a world of difference between upspeak and a question mark.

Upspeak forms part of “Valley Speak” or “Valspeak“, which is the colloqiual language or sociolect originally spoken by residents (mainly teenagers and 20-somethings) of California’s San Fernando Valley. It originated in the upper-middle class, yet now it is a worldwide speech inflection.

Language constantly evolves, and so it should. We use it to express both our deep and surface thoughts. California rides the crest of a wave in that it is one of the most cosmopolitan regions of the world and hence, is prone to many changes.

What interests me is how a spoken sentence can be changed from a statement into what seems like a question. An upspoken sentence is not really a question (at least not consciously), nor is there any questioning intent (or is there?). There is a discrepancy between word order and meaning and how the words are delivered vocally.

Here’s an example.

Let’s take the phrase “so I said I would do it” (”so” is so a Valspeak word). This written sentence is not a question. But in Valspeak it can be. Just raise the pitch of your voice at the end. This is actually a common verbal tool. This technique has been appropriated by proponents of Valspeak and integrated into popular culture. So why do it?

If you want to make a verbal statement, why not just make the statement? Why turn it into what sounds like a question? Well, I think the upspeak part of Valspeak may be an exaggeration of the ancient art of rhetoric, which is commonly used by modern politicians and speakers. It has been used since ancient Grecian times as a form of oratory persuasion; a subtle way of making a statement and asking a question at the same time, as well as being a tacit call to action.

Spoken rhetoric and upspeak illustrates the versatility of language in that its spoken form, it can negate the use of the 5Ws (and 1H (although I would add in another W: which)) who, what, why, where, when, and how, that are the classic precursors to a question and used for gathering information. The 5ws were made most famous by Rudyard Kipling in his poem “The Elephant’s Child.”

Nobody deliberately decides that they are going to create a way of speaking. It is a natural emanation of human needs and expression. That’s why I think that upspeak is ok, even though I don’t use it or like hearing it (I think it’s cheesy).

However, I think the key to understanding the difference between upseak and political rhetoric lies in intent. Rhetoric is designed to ask questions and provoke a response, whereas, to me, upspeak just makes the speaker sound like they are either unsure of what they are saying or beause they are, consciously or unconsciously, following a vocal fashion.

Am I opposed to upspeak? Absolutely not. It’s a part of modern speech, and I embrace change.

I’ll sign off by saying simply “Upspeak is ok?”

“See it all, till tomorrow”

Zen Buddhism doesn’t have any formal sacred texts. It has no equivalent of the Bible or Qur’an. So how do Zen Buddhists learn? Well, Zen is about experience.

When ideas are written down, they immediately lose their power. That’s not to say that the written word isn’t powerful; it is. But the initial idea, the spoken word and hearing it is more powerful.

Traditionally, Zen monks travelled the countryside in search of masters. This was a main part of a Zen student’s path. Like a tumbleweed, once a source of nutrition (or wisdom in the case of the Zen monk) was found, he would put down roots and stay a while.

In modern society, this rustic, nomadic type of searching for knowledge is rarely possible. But, thanks to intuitive, resourceful people we now have the internet. I think the internet is a natural evolution for us homo sapiens, in that it is a device to compensate for means of learning, experience and communication we used to have in ages past, but are unable to use presently. We constantly adapt and find ways to push ourselves on in areas that need a bit of work. On the internet, we find websites that nourish us intellectually, add to our bookmarks, and peruse them as part of our daily routine.

The internet’s great! But there’s more to life than plugging ourselves into the Matrix. By all means, use it. You’ll learn a lot and it’s an exciting feeling being part of a global community.

But it is habit forming, and real life social networks, especially the family, can break down if surfing the web becomes a barrier to communication.

Yesterday evening my wife and I took our kids and the dog for a walk at a local beauty spot. Fatigue set in and I said “you walk ahead, I’ll wait here and catch you on your way back.” So, I sat by the river’s shoreline and enjoyed the peaceful ebbing sunlight reflecting off the flat calm salt water and listened to the newborn lambs bleating vociferously in the field behind me. It was a pleasant mix of rhythmic, lapping water and changing light, with commentary from little fluffy sheeplings.

I saw a couple walking towards me on the path. I continued to enjoy the tranquility. As they passed me, the fellow said “hello” so I returned the pleasantry, and sensed he was enjoying his walk, free for a while from mundane anxieties. I felt a warm feeling in me. That chap was relaxed and open enough to extend a greeting to a stranger, and I felt privileged that he should.

I’ve had this simple, spontaneous thing happen to me many times, but every time it happens, it reinforces to me the beauty of friendly connectivity and communication between people.

It’s makes me feel alive, free and happy.

This is what Zen is all about.

“See it all, till tomorrow”

Thoughts can inspire not just generations but cultures, individually and collectively, to achieve the most noble aspirations. Some of humanity’s greatest figures have soared to realms of experience deep within the heart of nature and have perceived with their own minds the truth of what binds the universe together. Some, who can choose words that convey those mighty spiritual concepts with sufficient accuracy and potency, share this light on their return. These able ones have left us the world’s great spiritual, religious, and philosophical texts and teachings. Great poets and writers flesh out the world’s library of inspiring works. As we enter new realms of experience in these interesting and unpredictable days, the unrecognized mass of human beings are also, by our speech and writing, adding to the ever-changing richness of the “language legacy.”

What effect does the human voice have on us and our surroundings? Can it affect physical health, for example? Speech is the physical emanation of thoughts modified by emotions, hence it would be incorrect to say that speech itself affects the body, as ultimately thought and emotion are the motivating cause. However, once we vocalize thoughts, their corresponding vibrations resonate throughout the body, affecting every atom while being attracted to specific areas. The human voice and sound in general have been used through the ages in healing practices and ritual.

Shamans use sound and rhythm to enter altered states and vocal intonations to create conditions favorable to restoring balance. Silent as well as vocal prayer, especially singing, can have powerful effects on the mind and body. Vocal affirmation of inner beliefs and aspirations not only strengthens resolve but can vitalize the body. Some techniques of “vibrational medicine” involve using the human voice to disperse blockages within the physical or astral body. Modern medicine acknowledges to a degree the power and benefits of sound as a healing aid, although at present not the human voice. For example, physiotherapists are using ultrasound in the treatment of damaged muscle tissue.

Despite penetrating insights into the mechanics of language by modern linguistics, the ethics of speech seem to belong more in the realm of spirituality than of linguistic philosophy. Our daily speech follows distinct patterns, using our own habitual palette of words. Our motive, often unspoken, is more powerful than our words in its effect, and therefore more care should be taken in controlling motive than controlling the words we choose to speak. For example, in “vibrational medicine” do we primarily want to heal or to develop personal powers?

The ability to speak, then, carries with it a certain responsibility. Sometimes we don’t put our brains into gear before we speak and what comes out is either a load of nonsense or not a true reflection of what we were thinking. Our voices are physical emanations from inner planes. In The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker explains one theory of this concept — mentalese:

“We have all had the experience of uttering or writing a sentence, then stopping and realizing that it wasn’t exactly what we meant to say. To have that feeling, there has to be a “what we meant to say” that is different from what we said. Sometimes it is not easy to find any words that properly convey a thought. When we hear or read, we usually remember the gist, not the exact words, so there has to be such a thing as a gist that is not the same as a bunch of words”. — pp. 57-8

Concluding, he says:

“People do not think in English or Chinese or Apache; they think in a language of thought [mentalese]. The language of thought probably looks a bit like all these languages . . . to get these languages of thought to subserve reasoning properly, they would have to look much more like each other than either one does to its spoken counterpart, and it is likely that they are the same: a universal mentalese”. — pp. 81-2

Thoughts are so complex, and the languages we use so limited in their ability to convey what we are really thinking or our motives, that only a very small amount of our inner life ever reaches the physical plane. This means that what we do say carries enormous weight in characterizing ourselves. How then can we best use our voices to fully articulate what we are thinking? Should we bother to care what we say or how we say it? H. P. Blavatsky’s opinion was that we should because:

“…the spoken word has a potency unknown to, unsuspected and disbelieved in, by the modern “sages.” Because Sound and Rhythm are closely related to the four Elements of the Ancients; and because such or another vibration in the air is sure to awaken corresponding powers, union with which produces good or bad results, as the case may be”.  — The Secret Doctrine 1:307

Uttering certain words in certain ways, producing certain sounds and resonances within the vocal chords and cranium, have long been known to produce occult effects. Used correctly these can have beneficial effects, but used unwisely this can be very dangerous and it is with good reason that many “magic” words, mantrams, and methods of vocalizing are closely guarded. Even everyday, conversational speech causes occult effects which can influence those in the vicinity. This is simply karma in operation and as such is neutral. What determines the polarity of these causes — harmful or harmless, beneficial or detrimental — is the motive and emotion behind the words.

Once a word is spoken, its effects on our environment and within the mind of another are difficult to change. If we keep our thoughts to ourselves, however, we can manipulate them as far as our imaginations can soar, and perhaps if the circumstances are right we can speak with truth and beauty and avoid regretting what we said. On the nature of words, William Quan Judge wrote:

“Words are things. With me and in fact. Upon the lower plane of social intercourse they are things, but soulless and dead because that convention in which they have their birth has made abortions of them. But when we step away from that conventionality they become alive in proportion to the reality of the thought — and its purity — that is behind them. . . . Let us use with care those living messengers called words”. — Letters That Have Helped Me 1:14

On a practical level he further advises:

“Begin by trying to conquer the habit, almost universal, of pushing yourself forward. This arises from personality. Do not monopolise the conversation. Keep in the background. If someone begins to tell you about himself and his doings, do not take first chance to tell him about yourself, but listen to him and talk solely to bring him out. And when he has finished suppress in yourself the desire to tell about yourself, your opinions and experiences. Do not ask a question unless you intend to listen to the answer and inquire into its value. Try to recollect that you are a very small affair in the world, and that the people around do not value you at all and grieve not when you are absent. Your only true greatness lies in your inner true self and it is not desirous of obtaining the applause of others. If you will follow these directions for one week you will find they will take considerable effort, and you will begin to discover a part of the meaning of the saying, “Man, know thyself.” — Ibid. 2:63

Because speech is a physical ability with its roots in the spiritual part of us, it would make sense that spiritual laws are attached to it to which we must adhere if we are to fulfil our destiny and live consciously as spiritual beings. The way to do this has been outlined by many of the world’s teachers, one method being the Buddha’s teaching of right speech, a part of the Noble Eightfold Path. Right speech is part of the dharma or the dutiful way a human being should live, daily and through the course of evolution.

In Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path, the first step is to have the right view, an attitude or understanding that empowers one to act wisely in all spheres of life and in harmony with the world. Right speech naturally follows: the intention to refrain from false speech, from slanderous or divisive speech, from crude, harsh, or frivolous speech. If our minds are idle, we say the first thing that comes into our heads, and it usually communicates nothing of lasting value. Right speech encourages us to reflect on our speech, before, during, and after, and to examine why we want to speak at any given moment. Speech uttered rightly should be carefully weighed for meaning, said at the right moment, and be logical, moderate, and full of sense.

The Tipitaka contains some beautiful examples of the Buddha’s use of right speech together with its theory. The Abhaya Sutta gives a short but comprehensive list of how a Buddha uses speech:

1. In the case of words that the Tathagata [Buddha] knows to be unfactual, untrue, unbeneficial (or: not connected with the goal), unendearing & disagreeable to others, he does not say them.

2. In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, unbeneficial, unendearing & disagreeable to others, he does not say them.

3. In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, beneficial, but unendearing & disagreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them.

4. In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be unfactual, untrue, unbeneficial, but endearing & agreeable to others, he does not say them.

5. In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, unbeneficial, but endearing & agreeable to others, he does not say them.

6. In the case of words that the Tathagata knows to be factual, true, beneficial, and endearing & agreeable to others, he has a sense of the proper time for saying them. Why is that? Because the Tathagata has sympathy for living beings.

This seems like a lot to remember. However, the lines “he has a sense of the proper time for saying them” and “Because the Tathagata has sympathy for living beings” imply that Gautama didn’t have to remember a formula to use on demand. One of the differences between a higher being, such as a Buddha, and ourselves is that while a buddha always knows and speaks the truth, we are often placed in the position of knowing the truth and choosing not to speak it, such as admitting guilt. Honesty, conscience, and intuition are powerful allies on the road to achieving right speech, and courage is needed if mastery is the goal. Effective practice of right speech relies not on education or clever wordplay, but on saying what we feel we should say, always trying to feel sympathy for what might cause suffering to others or what may go against the truth.

Slander, ridicule, malicious sarcasm, and gossip, besides damaging the speaker, can cause emotional scars to the recipient which last a lifetime. Sometimes there is a fine line between the listener or subject perceiving such speech as harmless fun (laughing with) and harm itself (laughing at). If there is the slightest doubt that someone would be hurt by the words, keep quiet. Think. Put yourself in the frame of mind of the other person and choose new words if need be. The reflexive nature of much of our everyday speech means we often say what we don’t truly mean. Constant sensitivity to those around us is very difficult to maintain, but worth trying.

Despite the fact that no sane person would want to be the cause of another’s lifelong emotional scarring, there are other more far-reaching reasons not to create wounding speech. Judge lays these out in an article entitled “How Should We Treat Others?”:

“The fact that the person whom you condemn, or oppose, or judge seems now in this life to deserve it for his acts in this life, does not alter the other fact that his nature will react against you when the time comes. The reaction is a law not subject to nor altered by any sentiment on your part. He may have, truly, offended you and even hurt you, and done that which in the eye of man is blameworthy, but all this does not have anything to do with the dynamic fact that if you arouse his enmity by your condemnation or judgement there will be a reaction on you, and consequently on the whole of society in any century when the reaction takes place.

. . .

“. . . As affecting you there may be various effects. If you have condemned, for instance, we may mention some: (a) the increased tendency in yourself to indulge in condemnation, which will remain and increase from life to life; (b) this will at last in you change into violence and all that anger and condemnation may naturally lead to; (c) an opposition to you is set up in the other person, which will remain forever until one day both suffer for it, and this may be in a tendency in the other person in any subsequent life to do you harm . . . , and often also unconsciously. Thus it may all widen out and affect the whole body of society. Hence no matter how justifiable it may seem to you to condemn or denounce or punish another, you set up cause for sorrow in the whole race that must work out some day.

. . .

“The opposite conduct, that is, entire charity, constant forgiveness, wipes out the oppositionfrom others, expends the old enmity and at the same time makes no new similar causes. Any other sort of thought or conduct is sure to increase the sum of hate in the world, to make cause for sorrow, to continually keep up the crime and misery in the world. Each man can for himself decide which of the two ways is the right one to adopt”. — Echoes of the Orient 1:480-2

“When the time comes” — we so often do not recognize it for what it is. Yet armed with the knowledge that karma provides, we can at least have the opportunity in many situations to wipe the slate clean.

Buddha’s reason for renouncing his just reward of entering nirvana was to help humanity ease its suffering. Indeed, the gift of all the Great Ones and their helpers is that of empowerment so that the veil of ignorance may be lifted by our own actions, that the light of truth might shine within us all. When we think of the wider implications of our words, we can see why the Buddha is not alone in including speech in his teachings. The Hindu Vedas mention different grades of speech, indicating levels of spiritual teaching meant only for those who can understand the language in which they are communicated. Socrates asks in Plato’s Phaedrus, “Do you know how you can speak or act about rhetoric in a manner which will be acceptable to God?” and later expounds the noble virtues of the “serious pursuit of the dialectician” which can lead to the “utmost extent of human happiness.” In the Christian Gospels when Jesus sent his disciples out to spread his teachings he said they need only have faith in him and they would find the right words to use that could reach people’s hearts. Faith in the Christos principle within us, the part which intuitively understands, might illumine with wisdom the brain-mind which would ensure spontaneous, truthful, spiritually inspiring speech. Native American tradition teaches that each person should regulate his or her own life. “Give your word and live up to your word,” is one medicine man’s advice. Perhaps in trying to adopt the Buddha’s frame of mind of “sympathy for living beings,” our words would simply flow from our more altruistic motives.

Since writing can be spoken and conveys thoughts and intentions, it would follow that the ethics that apply to speech should also apply to writing. But the quality most prized by the true seeker — wisdom — is acquired through living, not by reading or writing. Nature, in offering the chance to learn her secrets, does not distinguish between the literate and illiterate, nor between those who can speak and the mute. Many spiritual teachers leave no written record. The power behind their spoken words, actions, and influence are recorded by their followers and over time the once living message becomes almost lifeless. For this reason the Great Ones continue their regular appearance at appropriate times in history and embrace the oral teaching tradition, though of course there are always exceptions.

Although it is a virtue we can all adopt, right speech can be relative: what is right for one person to say may not be right for another. It isn’t about being so concerned with what we say that we become rigid at the expense of spontaneity. Ultimately, what is most important in speaking and writing is getting the meaning or intention across. In listening and reading what is most important is trying to understand what is truly meant. We each rely heavily on our intuition to decipher the melee of information and stimuli we encounter every day in order to discern the true from the false. The intuition appeals to us to try to understand the language of spirit which speaks through all of nature. This is a reflection of our innate and constant unspoken desire to realize truth, an inheritance from our spiritual ancestors, the creative gods or forces of the universe. And we do this without recognizing that we do so. We learn when we don’t think we are learning, and yet surely there is a responsibility to meet this unseen, inner impulse halfway by making ourselves as receptive to it as we can. The practicing of ethics and the daily willing of the mind to do the bidding of one’s conscience and intuition is a difficult but tried and trusted way of sharpening and strengthening our awareness.

The magic of these spiritual teachings of right speech can come alive only when put into practice. It is something we can start doing immediately and which is free and relatively easy to begin with. It is heartening to know that despite the fact that there are thousands of languages, there is a deep-seated universal quality present within enabling each to be used in the “right” way. If we try to practice right speech all the time, every word that passes our lips will take on greater significance. Despite it being a rule of conduct, right speech also carries with it total freedom of action. Indeed, it gives us greater scope for creativity because it encourages us to say things we may not usually say, or not say anything at all, and to think more about the meaning and effects of the words we use, so that hopefully what we say and write will lose the power to wound and instead add much needed weight to the compassionate forces at work relieving suffering in the world.

“See it all, till tomorrow”

“you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality”.

Indeed, today written language has precedence over orally preserved language. Although recent archaeology has uncovered in China carved signs similar to writing which may date to 8,600 years ago, conventional wisdom holds that the first writing, cuneiform, appeared in Sumer in Mesopotamia around 5,000 years ago.

Some scholars, however, believe cuneiform was developed from an earlier counting system in use 10,000 years ago, recorded with etched symbols on clay tokens. Like modern Japanese or Chinese scripts, all currently known early written languages used pictograms and symbols. Later the quicker-to-learn alphabet system developed whereby individual sounds are represented by symbols strung together to form words. The last 500 years have seen an explosion in the way ideas are communicated. The ability to record and transmit written language on a grand scale emerged with the European use of the printing press during the 1450s, and since then literacy has spread worldwide, empowering millions to communicate their thoughts more widely. The past hundred or so years has seen the invention of the telephone, radio, television, typewriters, word processors, faxes, satellites, email, the internet, computer video-conferencing, and the human voice recorded on wax cylinder, records, tapes, compact discs, and computer drives. Mobile phones enable voice-contact with others almost any time, anywhere.

Words play a vital role in today’s global psychological battlefield. In those modern influencers of mass opinion — news, entertainment, and advertising especially — they are used with ever more contrivance and persuasiveness, resulting in a greater challenge for us to determine how accurately the world around us and our place in it is being described.

However, there are also many writers, broadcasters, and musicians using the language of the heart, inspiring many with visions and ideas of truth, beauty, hope, and optimism. Movements and programs promote ethics in this area, such as the American campaign “Words Can Heal” which aims to: “eliminate verbal violence, curb gossip and promote the healing power of words to enhance relationships at every level”; the extensive research in psychology and sociology into the positive and negative effects of speech on the speaker and hearer; and courses in speech ethics.

In the West speech also takes a backseat to writing with regard to preserving ritual and prayer. Not so with some indigenous peoples. For example, some Native American tribal leaders have been reluctant to allow written versions of their languages to exist. To maintain purity and sacredness, shamanistic teachings are never written down. The details and nuances of some natural healing methods have also been lost when oral instructions were written down. There has perhaps, then, never been a more critical time for us to understand what we really have in the power of speech and language and the ethical responsibilities that come with that power.

The story of what our speech is, its evolution, and how we can use it, is truly magnificent. H. P. Blavatsky expresses it mythically in The Secret Doctrine: as the gods or intelligent forces in nature awakened from an ages-long sleep, they began to form around them the material universe until they had expressed themselves in their relative fullness. First to arise was the desire to express latent possibilities and urges, and the bringing to rebirth by karma of long-dormant causes. The shockwaves of this initial cosmic event are still vibrating in every atom. The desire to express inner thoughts, forces, motivations, and ideas is constant throughout nature, as we can see in the perpetual destruction and regeneration of all things. Mankind is no exception to this universal law, since we are continually expressing our inner desires through our thoughts and actions. One way we express our thoughts is through speech.

Speech and language are implicit in our humanity, natural emanations from our innermost being. The Secret Doctrine marks the importance of spoken language by saying that it developed during the turning point in our evolution, anywhere between ten to fifteen million years ago (2:198). According to theosophy the earliest human beings were speechless, using a type of “thought-transference,” with no method or need to express thought physically. Over millions of years a language of vowel-like sounds akin to chanting evolved, later including onomatopoeic sounds from nature such as clicks, snaps, pops, and animal and plant noises. Eventually monosyllabic speech — vowel sounds broken by consonants — developed, as self-aware mind emerged along with the power of reasoning. This spawned the birth of language as we know it, and speech moved through cycles of growth including agglutinative languages, in which word elements are strung together without changing each other, and inflectional languages, in which word elements may change form according to their grammatical function. The pattern here is that everything flows and is governed from within, and our speech is intertwined with the creative forces of the universe. The more refined and developed human self-consciousness becomes, the more refined our language and speech may become, or we may move away from verbal communication altogether and rely more on psychic and spiritual methods, the seeds of which are germinating now.

The world currently has about 6,000 to 7,000 languages. As to their ultimate origin, opinion is divided between those who assert that language and speech are instinctive abilities and those who believe that linguistic evolution follows the Darwinian model of natural selection. Because the sound of a word has no direct connection to its meaning, words change meaning and form so quickly that many linguists argue that their origins are virtually untraceable, lost in history. The linguist most celebrated for work on the historical relationship between all the world’s languages, Dr. Joseph H. Greenberg, disagrees. He states that the meanings and sounds of certain language items are more stable than others: personal pronouns, parts of the body, and natural objects such as the sun and moon. By comparing hundreds of stable, core words he constructed a grouping of twelve super-families, such as Eurasiatic and Amerind, which may have been in development for at least 60,000 years. Russian linguists Illich-Svitych and Dolgopolsky derived independently a controversial Eurasiatic super-family called Nostratic, which they believe was spoken more than 12,000 years ago. Nostratic overlaps Greenberg’s Eurasiatic and includes some Middle-Eastern and Afro-Asiatic languages but not Eurasiatic’s Japanese and Eskimo-Aleut languages. Derek Bickerton contends, in opposition to the notion that primitive language may have arisen out of the basic need to communicate, that speech and language manifested as the mind strove to comprehend the world around it. His theory is underpinned by the idea that the stages of development a human being progresses through from conception to adulthood may parallel mankind’s evolutionary stages.

Archeological research into population genetics is used to support many historical linguists’ theories. Comparisons of mitochondrial DNA from ancient cadavers in various parts of the world, and cross-references of today’s language similarities such as grammar and syntax, reveals a picture of human migratory routes spanning millennia and the origins and development of certain languages. How far back this process can take us is debatable. Merritt Ruhlen makes the controversial case for a global language called Proto-Global, suggesting that today’s languages might be descendants of a single ancestral human language with roots hundreds of thousands of years old. This ties in with some DNA studies* which assert that all peoples, and perhaps all languages, are descended from a tiny African population some 200,000 years ago — the ” ‘Eve’ out of Africa” theory. Many scholars are now engaged in a multi-disciplinary endeavor called the “Emerging Synthesis” which aims to unite research in linguistics, human genetics, and archeology to form a single hypothesis concerning the origin and spread of modern humans from Africa to the rest of the world over the last 100,000 years. In contrast to the single ancestral language theory is the idea that there are multiple ancestral languages which may have developed independently of each other on different parts of the globe during different phases of human evolution which together spawned the diversity we see today.

* For a discussion of different models of human descent, see “The Quest for Human Origins” by Ina Belderis, Sunrise, April/May 2003.

Some projections show the likelihood that between 3,500 to 5,500 languages will become extinct in the next hundred years due to such factors as population displacement, merging cultures, land destruction, government policies, migration, disease, globalization, and electronic media. There were once many more languages; Spanish and Portuguese, for example, now dominate in South America at the expense of hundreds of indigenous languages. Now half the world’s population speaks only fifteen languages and half the world’s languages are spoken by groups of no more than 2,000 to 3,000 people. We may feel that having many languages in the world enriches our ability to express ourselves and allows us to perceive the world and others through concepts different from our own. The Sanskrit word karma, for example, virtually unheard of 150 years ago in the West, encompasses meanings and concepts with no European single-word equivalent. Is it not also important to preserve the folklore, mythology, and history of a people to give some kind of cultural and spiritual context to their lives? Attempts are being made to save and revive languages before the only remaining record of them exists in written form or they disappear altogether. Some argue, however, that with more people speaking fewer languages cultural barriers may lessen and encourage the blossoming of much needed understanding between peoples across the globe.

Writing in 1888, Blavatsky stated that “there was, during the youth of mankind, one language, one knowledge, one universal religion,” (SD 1:341). Although The Secret Doctrine refers to a few extremely ancient languages, the oldest that theosophical literature speaks of at length is Senzar, which Blavatsky describes as a secret sacerdotal language: “for there was a time when [it] was known to the Initiates of every nation, when the forefathers of the Toltec understood it as easily as the inhabitants of the lost Atlantis, who inherited it, in their turn, from the sages” going back to the earliest human beings (SD 1:xliii). It remains unknown to modern linguistics, and theosophical literature maintains that it has been unknown to the mass of mankind since global cataclysms caused the divergence of languages from a common tongue, events characterized by flood myths and the biblical allegory of the Tower of Babel. Blavatsky calls it the “direct progenitor” or “root” of Sanskrit, and relates it also to ancient Persian, Japanese, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Native American languages.

Senzar was a means of communicating the most profound esoteric truths. Although it has its own written characters, its essence lies in part beneath the universal pictograms, glyphs, and geometry used in spiritual traditions, and partly in the storytelling devices and archetypes of allegory, parable, and metaphor found in dreams, mythology, folklore, religions, and the arts. All of us can intuit to a degree the meaning implied in such symbols as a circle or cross, the parables of Jesus, or Grimms’ fairy tales. We think in symbols and concepts, in a language some linguists call mentalese, so these are perhaps collective memories of spiritual truths we all once understood that lie still within us, truths buried under many lives of habitual materialistic thinking, waiting for us to make the call. In an echo of Plato’s teaching that all learning is remembering, Blavatsky implies that mankind will one day restore knowledge of the universal mystery language.

One major object of linguistic study today is to “show that all languages are variations on a single theme, while at the same time recording faithfully their intricate properties of sound and meaning” (Language and Mind: Current Thoughts on Ancient Problems, Noam Chomsky, 1997). Studies do indeed show that, although different in many cases, all languages’ grammar follows underlying, natural, predetermined patterns much in the same way that a story must have a beginning, middle, and end, or a song must have rhythm, harmony, and melody. These researchers employ a holistic approach: learning how word categories (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, etc.) relate to each other and using them to construct phrases which in turn are positioned to form sentences. We do this almost effortlessly and unconsciously to convey meaningful information to others. Believing that languages are more similar than dissimilar, Chomsky pioneered investigating language as a common “cognitive structure” and function of the mind, much in the same way that a biologist investigates digestion as a common bodily function. In asking how we learn a language, he further asks what a human being brings to the task of acquiring and learning a language. He theorizes that we have a “language instinct” or “language organ,” the physical representation of which is as yet unidentified within the brain, that uses what he calls universal grammar, a natural foundation of rules or laws upon which any language can be learned, including sign languages. As a result of this innate quality, the ability to apply even complicated grammatical rules arises spontaneously within children from every culture as they acquire the use of language and expand their vocabulary. This substratum of intelligent order is certainly not taught by parent to child, for as Chomsky notes:

“…the child knows vastly more than experience has provided. That is true even of simple words. Young children acquire words at a rate of about one every waking hour, with extremely limited exposure under highly ambiguous conditions. The words are understood in delicate and intricate ways that are far beyond the reach of any dictionary, and are only beginning to be investigated. When we move beyond single words, the conclusion becomes even more dramatic. Language acquisition seems much like the growth of organs generally; it is something that happens to a child, not that the child does. And while the environment plainly matters, the general course of development and the basic features of what emerges are predetermined by the initial state [Universal Grammar]. But the initial state is a common human possession. It must be, then, that in their essential properties, languages are cast to the same mould. The Martian scientist might reasonably conclude that there is a single human language, with differences only at the margins”. — Ibid.

Language acquisition in children is a fiercely contested scientific area: the familiar “nature versus nurture” debate is alive and well here. On the one hand it is generally accepted that babies and young children do acquire individual words and their meanings into their mental dictionaries by learning from their family. However, understanding such complex and subtle qualities as recognizing and responding to individual sounds within a word, generalizing and specializing over categories of meaning (whether “stone” means rock, a particular rock, the verb “to stone,” all the qualities of a stone, a mineral, an inanimate object, etc.), and inference, are, like many innate abilities, little understood.

What is missing from the standard insights into language acquisition is the notion that the human body, with its brain, is the vehicle of an inner divinity. In our higher reaches we have an all-encompassing understanding of ourselves and our environment based on countless lifetimes of refinement through reimbodiment on physical, mental, and emotional planes. Our growth from germ through childhood to adulthood is directed by our spiritual self. The human soul or higher mind is itself an emanation of spirit. During physical gestation it attracts around it attributes from previous lives to build the composite spiritual, psychic, and physical human being, a process which stops only towards the end of the natural life-span. The link between spiritual and physical is strong, and we rely more on the spiritual than the physical for governing our biological and psychological processes as well as for developing deeper understanding.

The universal theme upon which all languages are based — written, spoken, sign, Braille, or finger-spelling — and the innate ability to acquire language with all its subtle, complex qualities may exist within and operate through a nonphysical medium. One possibility is biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic field theory: that fields of intelligent energy, “an inherent memory in nature,” are used to record and transmit mental, behavioral, social, and cultural ideas from one generation to another, a process Sheldrake calls morphic resonance. This idea relates to the archetypes in C. G. Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious. These archetypes are closely connected to our impulse to try to understand and learn, as they form the foundations not only of the physical world but also of our mental and emotional worlds. Collectively these living symbols may also form the vibration from the “keynote of truth” struck millions of years ago into the mind of mankind by higher intelligent forces overseeing the early stages of human development, as mentioned in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett. Theosophy holds that thoughts are entities with rudimentary intelligence which naturally reside within a vast mental repository, sometimes called the astral light, surrounding and interpenetrating our planet. As far as our physical, mental, and emotional growth is concerned, including language acquisition, we have karmic tendencies, individually and as a humanity, closely tied to attributes from former lives and influences within the astral light which determine general as well as more specialized strands of our development. The rapidity and rationale of our first language acquisition, therefore, may be an unconscious remembering or “downloading” of the language qualities we have learned as a species since the foundations of language were originally laid down within the astral light by the earliest humanity, all the way through to the grammar used by each of us in our last incarnation.

“see it all, till tomorrow”

A few years ago I embarked on a study of speech and language, because I wanted to learn as much as I could about current and ancient thoughts on what language and speech are and how they developed. The finished article was originally published in October/November 2003, December 2003/January 2004 in Sunrise, the official magazine of the Theosophical Society with International Headquarters in Pasadena, USA.

This piece is long (6436 words according to MS Word), so I’ll split it into two posts.

Part one deals with the history of language and speech and it’s development, drawing from ancient and modern sources.

Part two addresses how we use speech and language, it’s impact on the world around us, and the ethics involved in their use.

As I’m no expert, this study is by no means exhaustive, and only scratches the surface, but I hope it gives a deeper insight into the amazing natural gifts we call speech and language.

“See it all, till tomorrow”

But wait…wait…What has this got to do with language?  I’m coming to it…

…Almost before the other driver passed me in a flash, out of the corner of my eye I saw his hand go up in apology, and saw him mouth “sorry.” So…there’s where language comes into this. In a potentially disastrous situation the other driver sorted his road positioning and had the time, and manners, to apologise to me in two ways: both visual, but both using different forms of language.

Everyone appreciates an apology, or should do anyway. It costs nothing and mends broken bonds.

So, what did I take from this? There are many forms of language, not just written. Sometimes a simple gesture can speak volumes and make a bad situation that little bit better. It’s knowing what to say and when to say it that’s important.

“See it all, till tomorrow”