Language

From one perspective, a history of interpersonal conflict suggests that whilst an invitation of knowing and experiencing the divine and the sacred in the midst of life has been extended to humanity, there is little clarity as to how such a goal is accomplished.

True, there are religious texts which communicate about the putting of false idols before a living God, of living in sin, of nurturing a willingness to surrender to a higher power and to dwell in righteousness. There are also differing interpretations of many sacred texts and this in turn has given those with influence, charisma and aspirations of power to exercise hubris through either a sense of ownership or assuming that their interpretation is best and should be enforced upon everyone else.

What remains of free will is for a person to be willing to comprehend or to discern how to prepare the soil before planting any seeds.  

John Stuart Mill, the 19^th century political philosopher and economist who was influential in the course of liberalism and utilitarianism, said, “The principle itself of dogmatic religion, dogmatic morality, dogmatic philosophy, is what requires to be rooted out; not any particular manifestation of that principle.” 

There is a trend towards nihilism that is revealed through any endeavour to create a consensus of harmony between people. An institution of ‘political correctness’ is one such example, whereby to even think in terms of difference or division is judged as being socially unfit. Political correctness leads to unequal outcomes; ironic given that it feeds upon the perception of division and underlying resentment. Ultimately, it works to negate purpose and meaning in the world beyond that of securing the justification of its own existence. 

Fastidiously attempting to remove the tools of thought or dogma from people is not going to change the nature of the way that the human mind thinks; it is simply putting into place an assortment of punitive measures and regulations in response to that which is deemed as desirable. 

In the 5^th century BC, Herodotus wrote ‘The Histories’ as a narrative of the origin of the Greco-Persian wars. His objectives were contained in the first lines ‘This is the publication of the research of Herodotus of Halicarnassus so that the actions of people shall not fade with time, so that the great and admirable monuments produced by both Greeks and barbarians shall not go unrenowned and, among other things, to set forth the reasons why they waged war on each other.’

Did Herodotus accomplish his goal? History has shown that any culture or individual can supply their grievances and justifications for war. Despite this, there is one theme which holds true even if the characters, territory and justification changes through the ages – it is to do with how the human mind perceives its purpose and its place in the world. Our interactions can be painful but they are revealing if we are capable of paying attention. The past will continue to distort the present if we don’t.  

The human mind has a tendency to search for a thread of purpose and meaning to give to an experience of life. Stories are imaginative – they weave together information and frames of a perception of the past and of a future into a tapestry which is known as the present. In this regard, they serve as ‘time-out’ for the psyche whilst it moves through a cycle of integration. The irony is that we refer to these experiences as ‘real life’ or reality when they are simply a glimpse. 

At the heart of our stories of a hero and a despot is power: it is to do with freedom and the resolving of conflict between virtue and our mortality. As a mirror of every hero is a damsel in distress. It doesn’t matter what the damsel’s form (and she may be a person, a homeland, a promise, an ideal, a sacred text), the hero will have an impression that her very existence, liberty or honour is at stake.

The damsel is symbolic of a calling or a quest for the hero to engage with virtue. She is a portal into the experiential and an inner world of the psyche and her face is of the Beloved. She is alluring and primal, but will not be recognised by those who are not ready to meet her. Her purpose has been exploited by those who have sought to garner support for and to justify their ambition. 

Many will intuitively know that a patriarchal and mechanistic world view has become parched and blinkered by its infatuation with the solar energies and is need of a revitalisation of its purpose to be able to rejuvenate the psyche. The problems of the world are converging and a group voice has been gathering momentum to force through change ~ but change for change’s sake is not change. As Tolstoy said, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

If we are to progress as a species, it is not our technology that will save us. Technology is a mirror of consciousness in that it reveals an extent to which an inner or an outer dimension of being has taken command of a person or group’s perception of reality. Humanity has collectively been experiencing itself through a Newtonian and mechanistic world view and this has transitioned into an almost erotic preoccupation with technology. 

Having been starved for so long of the perception of freedom to be able to connect with others and to express an inner and emotional landscape, people have flocked to the frameworks of social media to express every opinion and aspect of their experience of life under a guise of creating intimacy, transparency and unity. Whilst this may have been assuaging a primal longing for and need for an experience of unity, what the process has been and continues to yield is information - to an extent that the perceived structure of reality is being collapsed through a worldwide web of information being digitized and the consumer becoming the consumed.

The storyline of the movie ‘the Matrix’ is an example of a digitized world that is projected as being ‘real’. There is a desire that is enshrined within the industry of robotics to create a perfect machine that is capable of conveying to a human that it has consciousness, whilst much of the work that is being implemented towards ‘transhumanism’ is about enhancing performance and consciousness through nanotechnology. The human mind is at play with its perception of being a creator and is intoxicated with endeavouring not only to measure, but to capture information of the natural world and to repackage it into a form which is more readily exploitable or desirable to it.

The means by which technology yields information with regards to a state of consciousness is through language. Binary is as much a language as is any alphabet and it has been a preoccupation of a scientific and indeed secular world view to establish that nature - and ergo reality – functions and is structured according to concise numerical and deterministic principles. 

As a legacy of such a world view, many people have become preoccupied with a literal appearance of words and ascribed meaning (hence language) and they absorb information and its meaning without question. When there is a powerful fusion between language and meaning, people can be less inclined to seek meaning themselves and their gaze is turned to the outer realms of their being rather than of exploring an inner terrain. 

Humanity is in need of a reinvigoration of the story of ‘the Hero’ but one that doesn’t instinctively rush to the aid of a damsel in distress and is willing to listen and to recognise the layers of her being as within himself. The feminine principle whether it resides in a subjective experience or in an appearance of a woman in an outer world does not call for or be in need of any protection or to be relegated to an inferior status of a minor. There is an element of toxicity and hubris that is present in the Hero when he projects an element of shame and scorn upon his Beloved and he seeks to preserve his image and a status quo instead of integrating her into his psyche. Old stories have to be seen in a new light.

Language ergo meaning has to be recognised and known esoterically; it loses much of its content whenever an assumption is made that something has been understood and of it being used primarily as a tool for navigating and communicating in an outer realm. Certainly, there has been a depth of commercial and educational necessities and advantages secured through the ages of an intent for and a process of language to be written down, duplicated and shared between cultures, but it has proved to be a double edged sword in that language has a capacity to act as a gear box upon consciousness and to transport people to differing realms of their being without registering where it is that they are going or its consequence.

If we are to know some of the ways in which information remains alive in the midst of language then it is through the use of image – this communicates with the whole brain rather than simply the left hemisphere and it activates those centres which recognise an inherent meaning of words as they are relating to reality, rather than of being tasked with implementing or creating them.

My interest in the Egyptian hieroglyphs has shown itself to be a portal or an entry into what it is that constitutes a ‘Living Language’ of light - another which has come to my attention quite recently has been the language of the Kabbalah.