Beyond Speech and Mind

[Guest guest]

The Tao that is the subject of discussion is not the true Tao. The quality which

can be named is not its true attribute. (Tao Te Ching)

 

From whence all words and the mind returned baffled back again. (Taittiriya

Upanishad).

 

 

IF THE spiritual truth cannot be expressed in language, then how can it be

communicated? And if it cannot be described, then how can we establish even the

probability that it exists? There seems to be a paradox at the very heart of the

teachings of Yoga which lays it open to the charge that the truth it teaches is

nothing but a fantasy or a meaningless void. For Yoga, although it uses language

to awaken the mind of man to the truth of his own spiritual nature, does say in

a very real sense that the truth transcends the understanding of the mind and

cannot be expressed in speech. On the other hand, it teaches that the truth must

be experienced directly if it is to be really understood or known.

 

The twentieth century has seen a great interest in the philosophy of language, a

topic which has dominated some of the leading schools of thought during the last

fifty years. As a result a good deal of what we used to believe about language

has been thrown aside. One of the germinal ideas of this period was Ludwig

Wittgenstein's picture theory of language. Early in his career he came to the

conclusion that the structure of a sentence mirrored the structure of the

empirical facts which it expressed, that a proposition was a kind of 'picture'

of the facts that it asserted. Just as a map represents a tract of country

because it is, in a certain sense, a two-dimensional copy of the topography of

the country, so Wittgenstein held that the structure of a particular sentence

reproduced in some sense the pattern of experiences which it described. In a

famous aphorism in his 'Tractatus' he says:

 

The gramophone record, the musical thought, the score, the waves of sound, all

stand to one another in that pictorial internal relation which holds between

language and the world. To all of them a logical structure is common.

 

The point here is that if we think, say, of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as a

pattern of impressions on the microgrooves of a gramophone record, or as it is

when accurately remembered in the mind's ear, or as a pattern of ink marks in

the score and again as a sequence of sounds in the concert hall, there is

something in common between them all, no matter how different they may be. And

that common element is their structure or pattern. In a like manner,

Wittgenstein thought, the structure of language reproduced the pattern of

experience.

 

Words can be used to describe experience only if they have meaning, and the

fundamental question in the philosophy of language is how we learn the meaning

of words. According to Bertrand Russell: 'If we understand what a sentence

means, it must be composed entirely of words denoting things with which we are

acquainted or definable in such words.' On this view there are only two ways of

learning the meaning of a word. In the first place we can learn it, as a child

learns the meaning of the words 'mother' or 'father', by hearing it repeatedly

in association with the experience of a particular object or person. This is the

primary method of learning the meanings of words and we all learn our basic

vocabulary in this way. It is also one of the ways in which we continue to

augment it with new words all through life. But as soon as the meanings of some

words are known, we can learn the meanings of new words in terms of them, by

verbal definition. This provides a second method of augmenting our vocabulary,

by means of which I can describe something that my hearer has never experienced

provided that I can do so in terms of things which he has experienced. I can,

for instance, describe a centaur provided that he has learnt through experience

the meanings of the words 'horse' and 'man', or a mermaid provided that he knows

the words 'girl' and 'fish'. Oscar Wilde's description of hell as 'like a wet

Sunday afternoon in the Cromwell Road' is another example of verbal definition,

where something which one has not experienced is described in terms of something

one has. The meanings of words given in the dictionary are all conveyed in terms

of verbal definitions, and such definitions, spoken or written, and often

implied in the context of sentences used in conversation rather than explicitly

stated, are the commonest method used in learning a language.

 

These two methods of learning the meanings of words correspond closely to what

the philosophers have called knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by

description, and an important point about them is that although knowledge by

description can extend our vocabulary and our understanding, it can only do so

by manipulating words whose meanings we already know by direct acquaintance. We

can only have learnt the meanings of the latter by being able to point to

something in our experience to which it corresponds, and since this is the

primary method of learning to use language, the ultimate range of language is

limited by what we can point to and describe in our own experience.

 

If we enumerate the kinds of words which are available to describe experience,

we arrive at the following list:

 

1. Proper names

2. Class names

3. Words implying action

4. Words for qualities

5. Words implying relations

 

We can feel fairly confident in adopting this list for, with astonishing

unanimity, it is independently arrived at by Shri Shankara writing in the eighth

century and Bertrand Russell writing in the twentieth. Russell adds one small

additional group of 'logical words' (including words such as 'a', 'the', 'all',

'some', 'or', 'not', etc.), but their main importance is in the interpretation

of the structure of sentences, and they do not in themselves describe any

additional features of experience. What is common to all the other groups of

words is that you can point to examples of them in experience; objects can be

named when they are seen and so can particular actions, qualities and relations.

Even psychological experiences like 'remembering', when they are shared, can be

pointed to and named, and it is in this way that a child first learns the

meaning of 'remembering'.

 

By proper names are meant those names which, strictly speaking, apply uniquely

to a particular individual or object, so that there is only one such individual

or object to which they correspond. This distinguishes them from class names or

so-called common names which apply to any one of a group of objects. Examples of

proper names might be 'Nebuchadnezzar' or 'Popacatapetl' which are the names of

one particular king and one particular volcano respectively. In the Indian

classics familiar to Shri Shankara the standard example of a proper name was

'Dittha'. Class names, on the other hand, refer to a universal (in Sanskrit

'jati') of which we experience many different instances. Shri Shankara gives the

standard examples of 'cow' and 'horse', but class names can apply equally to

inanimate objects such as books, words or triangles. Words implying action

(karma, kriya) include words like 'cook' and 'teacher' which characterise

someone as engaging in a particular activity, as well as the names of the

actions themselves.

 

Words for qualities (guna) are perhaps the most important group of all, for our

experience of the external world comes to us through the five senses and all

sense experience is made up of qualities. In this group are words such as

'white', 'black', 'red', 'blue', 'loud', 'smooth', 'bright', 'sweet', and

'musty'. But there are also qualities in mental experience, such as 'sad', and

'annoying', which are not sense qualities, but emotional ones. Finally there are

words implying relations (sambandha) of which Shri Shankara gives the examples

'wealthy' and 'cattle owner'. These two words mean someone who is related to

riches or cattle respectively in the relation of owner to owned. 'Wife',

'husband', 'Chairman of the Board', or 'Superior' are other instances of words

implying relations, but there are many such words applying not to individuals

but to objects or experiences, such as 'similar', 'before', 'after', 'behind',

'in front', 'greater', 'to the right of', etc.

 

These different kinds of words are not mutually exclusive. Some proper names,

for instance, are so common that they are practically class names, of which we

experience many instances. Hence the proverbial 'Tom, Dick or Harry' or, in the

Indian classics, 'Devadatta'. Similarly the word 'mother' certainly implies a

relation, and it is also a class name of which there are many instances. But to

a particular child it may at first amount to the proper name of an individual.

 

A further point is that not all kinds of words are equally necessary for

describing our experiences. Russell holds that we can do without the first three

groups of words altogether and rely entirely on the words which describe

qualities and relations, because these would in principle allow us to describe

anything and everything about our sense experience. Those things we call

objects, to which we give proper names and class names and which we describe as

engaging in different activities, are nothing, when philosophically analysed,

but bundles of visual, tactile and other sense qualities, from which we infer

the existence of the outer object. Hence, if we want to reduce the words to the

minimum necessary, we could describe all our experience in terms of qualities

and the relations between them. Objects are not the fundamental stuff of

experience for Russell; more fundamental are sense qualities and relations. In

this he reminds one of the Vedantic doctrine that all objects are unreal names

and forms, which have an empirical reality but not an absolute reality, and are

made up of the qualities of nature called 'gunas'.

 

If all meaning is derived ultimately from direct acquaintance, how is it

possible to derive any real knowledge through language of something which is not

already known to us in experience? Russell admits that through inference and

verbal testimony we can arrive at an uncertain knowledge of the existence of

things which transcend our own present and past experience, and that

verifiability is therefore not a universally valid criterion of the truth of

linguistic statements. But from the point of view of the spiritual truth there

is a more important limitation in the use of language, if it is only able to

denote things which you can point at in experience. The stuff of experience

ultimately resolves itself into patterns of qualities and the spatio-temporal

relations between them. But what if language is asked to describe something

which has no qualities and no relations?

 

In his Commentary on Chapter Thirteen of the Bhagavad Gita, Shri Shankara says:

 

It stands to reason that Brahman (the Absolute Reality) cannot be expressed in

words...for every word employed to denote a thing denotes that thing, when heard

by another, as associated with a certain class, or a certain act, or a certain

quality, or a certain kind of relation...But Brahman belongs to no class. [it is

without-a-second, there is nothing with which it can be compared.] Being devoid

of attributes, it possesses no qualities. If it were possessed of qualities,

then it could be denoted by a word implying a quality. Being actionless, it

cannot be indicated by a word implying an act. The Shruti (Scripture) says: 'It

is without parts, actionless and tranquil.' (Svetasvatara Upanishad VI.19.) It

is not related to anything else, for it is one, it is without a second. It is no

object of the senses. It is the very Self. Wherefore it is but right to say that

it can be denoted by no word at all.

 

This would amount to agnosticism if there were not another element in experience

with which we are already directly acquainted, over and above the sense

knowledge and the contents of the mind. This element is our own Self. But,

although it is self-evident to us, it is not something which we can point to at

a distance, because it is immediate. And the self which we imagine to possess

qualites and relationships is not the true Self but the ego. Hence words cannot

describe the Self directly. 'A word or an idea', Shri Shankara writes in his

Thousand Teachings, 'can refer to an object but not to anything which is not an

object. They cannot refer to the Self because it is their own Self, and neither

can the ego-sense in the mind reveal the Self for the same reason.' (Upadesha

Sahasri XVIII.24)

 

At this crucial point Shri Shankara parts company decisively with Russell's

philosophy. For Russell experience is entirely woven out of qualities and the

relations between them, and persons and things are, in the final analysis,

simply complexes or bundles of compresent qualities. In his view 'the subject in

psychology and the particle of matter in physics, if they are to be

intelligible, must both be regarded either as bundles of experienced qualities

and relations or as related to such bundles by relations known to experience.'

For Shankara, on the other hand, the Self can never be made into an object of

experience, because it is that in which the personality of man lives and moves

and has its being. This is not to deny that the empirical 'I' of man can be

experienced. But although it always stands in close proximity to the Self, the

ego is not the Self. 'Words may designate this complex, the ego-sense, because

it is associated with a universal and with action, etc.' (Upadesha Sahasra

XVIII.28) This ego is indeed a bundle of qualities and often a very mixed

bundle! It is one of a class of similar objects, for there are many other egos.

As the doer and enjoyer, it acts and enters into many relationships. Hence it is

eminently suited to be denoted by words.

 

But the real Self of man, the absolute within the personality, is non-dual. It

is without a second. There is no class to which it belongs because there is no

other thing with which it can be compared. It is actionless and without

qualities or relations. How then can it be accessible to the senses or to verbal

definition? It might be supposed that it was related to the ego-sense and the

mind by a relation known to experience (to use Russell's phrase), namely, the

relation of knower to that which is known. There is an empirical sense in which

this is true, but Shri Shankara says that it is an unreal relation, like the

relation of a face to its reflection in a mirror, and being unsubstantial it

does not lend itself to verbal definition. We may see a rainbow curving

downwards onto the horizon and ending in a distant cottage seen on the hilltop.

The relation between the rainbow and the cottage is clearly visible, but if you

go there, there is no such relation, for it is only an appearance. So the

relation between the real Self and the unreal ego is not a real relation, but an

apparent one. However substantial the ego may appear, it cannot be caught hold

of and defined, for it is an appearance, a mere reflection of the Self in the

mind, half-subject, half-object. It is to pierce behind this reflection and to

discover the real Self behind it that the practice of Yoga is undertaken.

 

In Yoga, then, language is used, not to describe reality to man, because the

yogis hold that this reality cannot be described in language for the reasons

which have been given, but to awaken man to the reality already present within

his own being. Only in this one realm of his own personality can he awaken to a

direct realisation of Truth, because only here can his knowledge be immediate.

This is not experience of a new idea, for the relation between an idea and its

object is always distant and tenuous, and the correspondence between them may

frequently be most imperfect. But within the mind he can achieve a direct and

immediate knowledge of the Self, not as an object, but as the illuminator of the

mind. Any attempt to describe the spiritual reality adequately in language is

doomed to failure, but it can be realised as the innermost Self, beyond mind and

speech. Says the mystic Rumi:

 

His name will flee, when it sees an attempt at speech,

So that you cannot even say, 'Such an one will flee.'

He will flee from you, so that if you limn his picture,

The picture will fly from the tablet, the impression

will flee from the soul.

 

I was on that day when the Names were not,

Nor any sign of existence endowed with name.

By me Names and Named were brought to view

On the day when there were not 'I' and 'We'...

 

I bent the reins of search to the Kaaba;

He was not in that resort of old and young.

I questioned Ibn Sina of his state;

He was not in Ibn Sina's range.

I fared towards the scene of 'two bow-lengths'

distance';

He was not in that exalted court.

I gazed into my own heart;

There I saw Him; He was nowhere else...

 

Freedom through Self-Realisation

A.M. Halliday

A Shanti Sadan Publication - London

ISBN 0-85424-040-3

Pgs. 102-111