In the previous sections, we saw how words evolve from the roots and attain a unity of meaning that cuts across many languages. In this section, Sri Ram Swarup explores the attainment of deeper meanings of words at both the intellectual and spiritual levels.
Antahkarana: Internal Organs of the Mind
Words in their diversity inevitably pointed toward unity. Ordinary objects tend to yield larger meanings and become symbols of a larger reality. An inquiry into words tends to become a study of thought, of mind, and even of being. There are two ways of approaching a language: (i) from the external world and (ii) from the mind. The Western approach, stimulated by its contact with the Sanskrit language in the last century, kept to the first approach, but in India, the second approach had received its full due.
Different names in Indian thought and yoga indicate these principles. The Upanishads refer to these principles as deha (physical), prana (sensuous), manas (mental), and buddhi (intellectual). We can further reduce these principles to three: indriya (senses), manas (the organ of perception), and buddhi (intellect). These taken together are known as antahkarana, the internal organs of cognition. Joining indriya with manas, we can reduce their number to two—manas and buddhi.
The two have their own characteristic ways of approaching reality. Manas looks at an object in its materiality and particularity; buddhi as a thought, a concept, an idea. At the level of indriya and manas, one has the sense of confrontation (pratigha) and contact (sparSa); but at the level of buddhi, the objectivity is of a different kind. In its purified state, Buddhi also represents a spiritual faculty that gives deeper meaning to words. A language reflects this peculiarity and structure of the mind. The different principles of mind contribute different words to a language and also different layers of meanings to the same word.
Some are predominantly manas words; some are buddhi words. Some are names of physical objects like a table or a chair. Even at this level, there are various degrees of abstraction. As one penetrates deeper, one leaves behind individual objects of ordinary experience and enters the world of functions and structures, as in modern physical sciences. Here the names become symbols. Sensible words like ‘forces of production’ take a different direction and belong to a conceptual and intellectual order.
There is an internalising along with this generalising and conceptualising process of the mind. They become associated with our emotional and affectional mind, and thus they enter our prana-kosha (vital mind). There are other words, like “mother,” “father,” “friend,” “neighbor,” and “country,” that stand for some deep psychic qualities in the individual. In these higher meanings, motherhood, for example, is not mere viviparity, and fatherhood is not just a capacity for planting children. There are other words that apparently refer to only physical objects—plants, trees, rivers. Similarly, elements such as earth, fire, sky, and sun already exist within us. We respond to both in an intimate way.
All deeper truths of life are psychic. The experience of the outside world merely helps illumine the psyche, reminding it of its own truths. Similarly, any truth, regardless of how physical, can transform into a psychic truth. And the psyche, too, illuminates the physical. Words like non-violence, justice, and truth refer to the moral nature of man. These too are psychic truths. Words such as love, compassion, and service also originate from a similar spiritual source. In their less pure states, they still have vital content, but as the mind gets more purified, their meanings become deeper.
Some words like dama (self-restraint), yama (tranquillity), Santi (peace), dhyana (reflection), dharana (continued meditation), and samadhi (absorption) form no part of man’s experience, moral or intellectual. And yet they indicate a higher life.
The Expansion of Words
Words are based on many principles that coexist. A word simultaneously carries all the different meanings, depending on how different organs of the mind interact with the world. Thus, the mind sees an object as an individual, as a member of a class, as a symbol of something larger. A word has to stand for an object, a feeling, an idea, or the truth of the spirit. There is no word that is solely a physical referent, lacking larger intellectual and psychic meanings. Indeed, sensuous contact plays a larger role in words like table or chair, while words like friendship and justice indicate intellectual magnitudes.
Words have multiple meanings, and even the commonest words, at their most sensuous, have larger meanings. These meanings follow the structure and function of the mind. This mind peculiarity expands word meaning from particular to general, from object to quality, from concrete to abstract, and from objective to subjective. ‘Thorn,’ in its most rudimentary meaning, is a referent to a physical object. At a deeper level, the term can also refer to objects that possess similar qualities, such as nails and needles. Thus, the name of a thing becomes the name of a quality. The name could refer to a painful experience. A thorn pricks and exhibits a similar sensation to that of stinging, piercing, biting, and cutting. These all share a common quality of being “sharp.” The term ‘sharp’ is likely associated with the term ‘scrape’, which refers to the act of shaving, scratching, or eliminating a surface using a sharp tool.
The word ‘thorn’ expands from the name of a specific physical object to represent a particular characteristic sensation. This sensation, due to a shared quality with other similar sensations, gains a new membership in a larger club that includes words such as stick, stake, knife, and so on. A thorn’s sharp, piercing pain can represent any pain, distress, vexation, or irritation. Eventually, it could stand for anything that has a sting in it, which is ticklish, difficult, intricate, or challenging—a “thorny” issue. All these uses elevate the word from physical to sensual, mental, and intellectual.
Samkhya
The Samkhya philosophy, presenting these ideas more systematically, moves from the subtle to the gross. The first modification of an undifferentiated Primordial Reality (avyakta, Prakriti), more like mind than matter, is buddhi or mahat (intelligence, Vast). The latter gives birth to the principle of ahamkara (individuation or Ego). Ego bifurcates into both the spectator (mind or manas, and the senses or indriya), as well as the spectacle—the object. Thus, the perceiver and the perceived have a common matrix. If exclusive, the mind could not know its objects.
All objects of an indriya or sense meet in that indriya. The Brhadaranyaka Upanisad says that the uniting point of all forms is the eye, of all smells the nostril, of all sounds the ear. Then, all sense experiences meet in the manas. In fact, it is not the eyes that see but the manas. Different senses bring their reports to the manas, which then imposes its unity on them. While they may still retain the flavour of their origin, they become interchangeable within the manas. The term ‘sharp’ primarily refers to a tactile experience, but it can also describe an auditory experience, as in the phrase ‘sharp notes’.
Even in their roots, some words refer to two senses and experiences: the mind and sense. For example, the Latin word sapare means both to taste as well as to discern, or to know. ‘Saporous’ belongs essentially to the sense of tongue; other derivations like ‘savant’ and ‘sapience’ refer to qualities of the mind. The Sanskrit vid, to know, has two senses, as we see in its two Greek variants—eidenai, to know, and idein, to see. In Sanskrit, the root gives us the words vidya (knowledge) and veda (the Vedas). In English, from the two senses of the same root, we have vision, view, vista, and visit, in which the sense of seeing predominates; and also, words like wisdom, in which the sense of knowing prevails.
The manas serves as the gathering and beginning point for all organs of action. Instead of saying, ‘My hands work’ or ‘My legs walk’, we refer to an entity, ‘I’, that both works and walks. The manas also unifies the receptive and expressive functions of the mind, reconciling the concepts of knowing and doing. Every piece of knowledge is also action and vice versa, and behind both action and thought is the same power of consciousness (the primordial Reality).
From Manas to Buddhi
The senses bring their data to the manas; the manas brings its data to the buddhi. The latter brings unity to the manas-data, though on a still higher plane. It raises that data from the level of perception to the level of conception and understanding. It rejects everything that is sensuous and particular and converts it into the ideal, the abstract, and the essential. Buddhi can store, communicate, and transmit them. In summary, the freedom of buddhi-knowledge does not equate to its capriciousness. In philosophical language, manas-knowledge is ‘contingent,’ but buddhi-knowledge is ‘necessary.’
Not merely an extension of manas-knowledge, Buddhi knowledge possesses a new dimension, character, and power. It gives us conceptual and rational knowledge. In this sense, it is known as reason in the West. But in Samkhya, buddhi has a still higher existence. It is a principle of direct seeing, not so much of logical inference. Words also reflect the buddhi-level of meaning. A word like “thorn,” for example, at the manas level, refers to a particular object. At the level of lower buddhi, it becomes a name of a whole class of similar objects; but at a still higher rung of buddhi, it becomes a name of an ‘idea’ (like ‘to sit upon thorns’). Thus, thorn as an idea is very different from thorn as an object, as it acquires a new independence, a richer context, and enters a larger world.
Buddhi has this independence because it sees more, while manas only see what is presented to it. For instance, every feeling has numerous bodily correlates; the buddhi recognizes this fact and harnesses it for its own liberation. To illustrate, a strong feeling of fear could make a man’s blood run cold, chill his spine, make his flesh creep, or make his hair stand on end. Since Buddhi observes all of this, it can use any of these images to convey the same feeling.
Samkhya gives us a unified and ordered theory of all knowledge and meanings. Samkhya shows how consciousness moves from the physical to the psychological and the intellectual, as well as from the intellectual to the psychological and the physical. In life, the physical or the sensuous mind comes first. Psychological and intellectual meanings are extensions of the primary meaning. But in the statement of principles, tattvas, and to a mind that has turned inward, the order is reversed. The physical and the sensuous worlds reflect inner realities; outer objects convey information about inner states of mind. They represent, in a physical and sensuous form, the ‘idea’, some universal truth of the deeper psyche and mind. The sky, to this mind, symbolizes the infinity within, a concept that can also evoke the image of the ocean, stars, or even mathematical numbers.
So, to an inward mind, words convey a different order of meanings and reveal certain truths that already live in the psyche. When the soul awakens, this seeing does not negate other meanings; on the contrary, it unites them, raises them up, and provides a new comprehension and a new perspective.
Bhumis: Levels of Purity
Words derive their meanings from different organs of the mind that function at varying levels of purity. According to Samkhya, the organs of the mind have three qualities: tamas, rajas, and sattva, which make it dull, passionate, and pure, respectively. According to the Yogas, the mind functions at two levels (bhumis) of purity. We refer to these as kama-bhumi (the sensuous plane) and dhyana-bhumi (the contemplative plane). In kama-bhumi, the desire principle predominates. The mind binds to the lower meanings of the word. But as desire drops, one acquires increasingly more purity and enters the dhyana-bhumi, or meditative level. In this state, the mind becomes focused and ekagra, bringing to light the luminous forms of objects and unveiling their deeper meaning.
In Indian philosophical thought, we refer to all phenomenal reality as nama-rupa, which means subject and object, or thought and things. At the level of kama, both concepts are considered impure. The words belonging to kama-bhumi possess only surface meanings, which are loud and external. The sound signs attached to them are conventional.
A most lowly word is capable of having a higher meaning. The reverse is also true. The deterioration in the meanings of words like self, Brahma, God, soul, and truth is of many kinds and degrees. The words become too familiar, stereotyped, and innocuous. The spirit leaves them. Religious ideas and institutions become opiates of the people. Such is the tamasic degeneration. When people use the truths of the Spirit for self-aggrandizement and self-promotion, they undergo Rajasika deterioration. God transforms into a desire God, an ego God, or a God of a specific tribe or church, attempting to become the God of mankind through propaganda, salesmanship, crusades, proselytising, and wars.
In religious cultures, these words carry within them ego-satisfying meanings. The Roget’s Thesaurus demonstrates this in the English-speaking Christian world. ‘Revelation’, for example, arouses connected pictures of the “Word, Word of God, Scripture, Bible, etc.”; but the word ‘Pseudo-Revelation’, on the other hand, inspires the words like “Koran, Vedas, Zend-Avesta, etc.” Similarly, the term ‘Deity’ encompasses concepts such as ‘God, Lord, Jehovah, Holy Trinity’, while terms like ‘Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna’ are associated with ‘Baal, Thor, Mumbo-Jumbo, etc.’ Understandably, ‘false prophet’ is synonymous with figures such as Buddha, Zoroaster, Confucius, and Mahomet.
The people at Kama-Bhumi do not lack Gods, worship, a value system, or compassion, but their interpretations are ambiguous. People invoke the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity but practice colonialism, wars of liberation, mass liquidations, unequal treaties, slave labor camps, and thought control. Many religions have a strong political and ideological component. If we study religious words from this viewpoint, they provide intriguing psychological, sociological, and historical data. The different names and conceptions of Gods tell us the story of the rise and fall of different empires and cultures. The word ‘orgy’ arose from the Greek orgion, a sacred act or rite towards Bacchus and other Greek Gods. When these Gods fell before the new, rising Christian God, the word acquired a new meaning—revelry and drunkenness.
People use words that can be contentious, flattering, deceitful, hurtful, bragging, or contradictory. Even when words are not violent or offensive, they can still be inane, filled with jargon, irrelevant, and empty. Ram Swarup uses academicians and faculty members as an example! The words people use express, for most of the time, man’s essential thoughtlessness, ordinariness, triviality of interests, malice, or pride. As a result, these words lose much of their usefulness in conveying the higher life of man. Competent teachers have repeatedly warned against words that hurt and that tell nothing. The spiritual teachers celebrate ‘the mouth of a righteous man’, which they liken to a ‘well of life’. They hold that the wholesome tongue is a tree of life. The warning is against their lower meanings and outward use. Most of the time, most people do not refrain from using it.
This kind of degeneration is simple to spot. However, impurity also exists at a more sattvika level, where it mixes with the rajas and the tamas. It exists even in the thoughts and works of the poets, legislators, and philosophers. Humans rise above ordinary desires and enter a state of mind that is more imaginative and intellective. Here words become symbols and evoke unsuspected shades of meaning. They modify the meanings of other associated words. Poets best utilize the intuition of sensitive minds, even though a concrete definition is impossible. Such poets’ language best represents the finest aspects of a culture and literature. Such language raises the common folk from a vegetative existence to give them a sense of authenticity.
However, such literature, when not saved by a higher vision, becomes a substitute for reality. Many writers have taken to experimenting with hard-headed intellectuality where they explore the morbid and the sordid, the trivial and the inane in order to feel the touch of the real and to evoke the sensation of depth and solidity. However, they fail to capture the essence of reality. Another danger is that the poetic meanings have a quality of far-away suggestions and echoes of floating and ethereal forms. Many people may mistakenly interpret their subtle meanings in the ordinary sense. However, at another level, words possess more stable meanings that defy manipulation. These are spiritual meanings revealed to a mind that has attained a certain level of purity, freedom, equanimity, and self-status.
Another impurity arises when a man’s words exceed his experience. Here, no active evil is involved. However, speaking without authority can be jarring. Socrates was very sensitive to this impurity of speech in the poets, legislators, and philosophers. People speak words of wisdom without being wise; they speak brave words without being brave. They speak without feeling the words and intensities they use. They are unauthentic.
The Gita warns against flowery speech, but this is not against the scriptures but against those who approach them without adequate humility and preparation. While speaking about God, al-Ghazzali, an illustrious Muslim theologian of his time, fell silent and remained so for many months. He later explained that a voice had descended upon him, asking, “What do you know of what you are talking about?” He was literally struck dumb. The more one goes into the depths of a word and sees its hidden meanings, the quieter one becomes.
People of rajas and tamas, who do not care about the quality of their words, tend to be loquacious. On the other hand, people who have modesty, truth, and spiritual perception weigh every word. They are frugal in their speech because they know that speech is a portion of themselves. Words are holy, deserving reverence and circumspection.
Beyond this lies dhyana-bhumi or ekagra-bhumi. The mind acquires purity and one-pointedness, and desire forms begin to melt, revealing a more luminous world of objects. As meditation deepens, one discovers that the object’s light is the mind’s own. Words now refer to a reality that is more akin to mind than to matter. Samkhya postulates that it is not the eyes that see, but it is the seeing that creates the eyes, the caksu-dyatana. The purified mind moves to subtler levels of reality, and words also refer to these subtler levels. At a still deeper level of purity and impersonality, they begin to point to the unmanifest in the manifest, the non-being in the being, the imperishable in the perishable, the unspeakable and the silent in the spoken, the nameless in the name. On this bhumi, the language reaches the highest meaning, where words only heal, soothe, and bless. Words finally express the Gods within.
Higher Meanings: Their Secret Abode and Secret Key
As words are capable of expressing deep meanings, they are eminently suited for expressing man’s higher life. A word is as high and deep and as shallow and outward as man’s mind. Where do these meanings reside? Why are they not so self-evident? How can they be unlocked? The Rigveda speaks of the secret name and secret words. It says that the speech, surrounded by a thousand syllables, sahasraksara, resides in the highest region of heaven, parame vyomani.
This tradition holds that a word has deep roots in our being, hiding its greater life there. The Rgveda asserts that a word exists on four levels, with three of them concealed within the heart’s cave. According to the Jewish mystic tradition too, God has a secret name that “has not been sent into the world.” What do these statements mean?
We hardly know much of anything. If this is generally true for all life and spirit, why should speech, one of their most important expressions, be an exception? This approach to speech aligns with the broader perspective of Indian thought, which views reality as existing at different levels of subtlety, ranging from the gross to the subtle. It can be likened to a seed that contains a tree, and then the tree transforms back into the seed. The above image also influences the conception of the word. One way, it’s the outermost thing; another, it’s central to man’s experience. It resides in the heart, surrounded by rings of lightning and fire.
Words encompass all the planes of existence, all the levels of experience, and they also carry the inner life. Thus, a word has several layers of meanings, the deeper layers remaining hidden from the surface mind. We could say that a word possesses three bodies, each within the other: physical, subtle, and causal. The first body encompasses the direct physical meanings of a word, as well as its secondary meanings that are accessible to ordinary minds. The subtle body contains many psychological seeds—meanings shining with a great inner intelligence. A reflective mind understands them. The third subtlest heath contains original and pure meanings, which also support all the phenomenal meanings of a word, mental or physical. This is the highest status of a word, and it remains invisible. They are accessible to the intuitive mind.
Indian thought studies the word from two main angles: as sound, Sabda, and as the object to which that sound refers, artha. Word as sound exists on several levels, like vaikhari, madhyama, and pasyanti. Vaikhari is the spoken word. In madhyama, the word becomes mental, apprehended by the inner mind. Pasyanti is a conscious principle that resides in the body of a word, acting as a knower and a shaper.
Pasyanti eliminates the distinction between the denoter and the denoted, Madhyama blurs it, and Vaikhari fully perceives it. Whether we start with the sound of a word or its object, both soon meet and become thoughts, which then become a principle of consciousness. Conventionally, we link the spoken sound and the physical meaning at the surface level. But as we go deeper, the subtle in the sound responds to the subtle in the object, both being self-formations of the same mental stuff. The Greeks, too, held similar thoughts on this subject. They also believed that a word is a sound, rooted in thought.
The meanings of a word live in the spirit and in its different organs and instruments. They live as images, concepts, thoughts, the names of Gods within, as powers, and as attributes of the self. Words mean more than the commonplace experiences of a man. People who speak a language shape it in one sense. The American language, for example, is smart, racy, scintillating, animated, and brilliant but somewhat shallow. Nor can the language of a nation rise above the vision and purity of its poets and thinkers. Shakespeare gave the English language power and eloquence by not using more than 10,000 words. The Bible has helped raise the English language morally and spiritually.
Most of the Indian languages are deep and rich. Even the most gifted individual cannot significantly contribute to these languages. But even the richest language needs constant ventilating. This is what the great Tagore did for the Bengali language. We think erroneously that a language is lived by its grammarians, journalists, writers, and poets in the ordinary sense. A language lives through its men of truth, vision, seeking, and austerity. Chandidas and Tulsidas revealed new worlds of love, devotion, and purity. In Vyasa, the language became deep like the ocean. In him, they become revelatory, veritable mantras. To read the Mahabharata is an act of deep meditation.
How do we unlock the higher meanings? The higher meanings are revealed by invoking the deeper layers of the mind through the cultivation of purity, dedication, and aspiration. A language is divine in origin. But it has picked up lower associations and connotations. Therefore, words that are filled with grand inner eloquence become spiritually dull. A word conceals its meanings and powers within itself, hidden behind numerous outer coverings. The word becomes pure as it breaks through its outer layers of images, noises, and echoes. The word merges into thought, and thought in turn merges into silence. What the word initially concealed, it now begins to reveal.
The Yogas use concentration and meditation for entering into these larger meanings of a word. When the mind learns to linger on its object for some length of time, it acquires self-concentration. Deepening meditation leaves even luminous rupa behind, ushering us into the realm of vijnana, the mind. Here there is only one reality—the reality of a universal mind. Beyond this lies the realm of the Spirit.
Meditation brings interiorization. Behind luminous forms is Godhead. The One interpenetrates the many, and the concrete finally becomes the vehicle of the abstract. The manifest reveals the Unmanifest. An inward look thus transforms even physical objects into truths of being, abodes of Gods, whereas to the outward mind, even Gods become mere physical objects and acquire merely utilitarian meanings.
The Illustration of Fire
‘Fire’, in ordinary perception, reveals only its physical forms. Under the concentrated power of meditation, fire reveals its tanmatra, its mahat form, and even its avyakta form. As we meditate on it, the ordinary fire reveals its more subtle and luminous form. Later, it reveals the more universal aspect. Fire inhabits our hearth, cooks our food, resides in our digestion, and also shines in our intelligence. It is also the energy behind our spiritual labor. It illuminates our path and coexists with the sun and eye. It is both the embodiment of God and their messenger. The Vedic Rishis worshipped this fire, which burns up all impurities and only the pure remaining. The word fire derives from a Sanskrit root pa, which means to purify.
Ordinarily, the sky refers to an outside phenomenon. But in meditation, it becomes a symbol of infinity, pervasiveness, and freedom. It becomes a power of the soul and an attribute of the Godhead. The sky is infinite and formless; it supports all forms. The infinity of the sky reconciles all contradictions. It remains motionless, moving faster than the speed of the mind. It moves—it does not move. It is far; it is near. It is within; it is without. With its psychic attributes, the sky enters the four samapattis of Buddhist yoga, which are very advanced stages of meditation. The Upanishads repeatedly mention contemplation on the sky.
One could also choose non-material objects for meditation. Buddha chose the widely common experience of suffering or pain. Meditation gives the word increasingly deeper meanings as one begins to suffer in the suffering of others. One also learns from suffering indifference, which conveys the message of a higher joy, deliverance, and freedom. Similarly, when we meditate on moral and spiritual truths like non-violence (ahimsa), truth (satya), non-stealing (asteya), celibacy (brahmacarya), non-possession (aparigraha), and so on, the meanings become increasingly profound. Meditation reveals the larger, inner truths that transcend their ordinary, egoistic meanings.
One could also choose for meditation some psychic truth embodied in one of the names, forms, aspects, or incarnations of God. Rama and Krishna are popular in India. If Krishna is the chosen deity, first one reads about Krishna’s life and his stories. Simultaneously, reflection and meditation on the name and form of Krishna start the process of a deeper understanding. Therefore, the practices of svadhyaya, sravana, kirtana (studying scriptures, listening to and singing God’s names respectively) are essential components of meditation. Once the mind stabilizes and focuses inward, it develops the ability to comprehend the righteousness of this name.
We call the deity Krsna (popular spellings ‘Krishna’) because He draws His devotees (krs) to Himself; we call Him Visnu because He surpasses (vis) all. Hari, because He steals away (hr) the hearts of His worshippers or takes out their sins; Rtadhaman, because He is the resting place (dhama) of the Law and the Truth; Sattvata, because He always abides in His true nature (sattva); Acyuta, because He never lapses (cu) from His true being; Aja, because He is unborn; Damodara, because spiritual aspirants attain to Him through self-control (dama); Govinda, because He saves the world or the Earth (gam) from sinking; Vasudeva, because He is the dwelling place (vasa) of all creatures; and so on. These are some examples that demonstrate how meditation can unlock the deeper meanings of moral and spiritual truths. Whether one meditates on physical elements or directly on moral and psychic truths, the results are the same.
In Part 4, Sri Ram Swarup deals with the names of Vedic Gods and shows us how they deal with the highest philosophical truths.
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