Language, Honesty and Power

Language, Honesty and Power

The name of Krishna is nondifferent from Krishna. Speaking the name Krishna makes Krishna present. Chant the name of Krishna and Krishna dances on your tongue.
– Sri Prabhupada

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
– Hebrews 4:12

And God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light.
– Genesis 1:3

This essay on language ties together a lot of issues I have been thinking about for a long time. The immediate trigger that inspired me to put this together was a sentence I saw in an online comment, claiming that, “The English language was not created to tell the truth”.

I humbly disagree – not just about the English language, but about language in general.

Here are the points I wish to make in this essay.

• There is a connection between language, truth, reality and power. Words point beyond themselves.
• Astrology is one of many sacred languages. The symbols have power and embody living realities. The symbols point beyond themselves. Therefore we must be careful how we use them.
• We have a sacred obligation to tell the truth. If we do not, it robs our words of any power, and is ultimately self-destructive.
• You can tell the difference between true and false language, real and empty language.
• If you are going to work with a sacred system like astrology you are well-advised to take a vow to speak the truth, and to be careful with how you use language.
• Philosophies and movements that view language as an arbitrary construct to gain power are ultimately self-contradictory and self-defeating.
• It is a very good idea to spend time considering the meaning of words, to define words carefully, and to look into the etymology of words you use.

Sacred Words & Language

I want to start with some metaphors about language from the Bible. These will give us some core concepts to build on.

Psalm one is about the Law of the Lord, the living word that creates and rules the universe. A person rooted in the law is “like a tree, planted by the rivers of water, which bringeth forth fruit in due season.” By contrast, a person without the Law is “like chaff, which the wind driveth away.” Alive or dead; rooted or rootless; formed or formless; substantial or insubstantial.

The first chapter of Genesis describes the process of creation by a series of proclamations, fiats, let-there-be’s. And God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. The command is given, the creation gives place.

In the first chapter of John, the beginning of all creation is the Word, the Logos, and through the Word all things were made. That concept of Logos has its roots in both Jewish and Hellenistic culture.

To expand this concept a bit, I have read that Chinese translations of the New Testament translate the word Logos by Tao, the concept from Tao de Ching and the I Ching. “In the beginning was the Tao, and the Tao was with God, and the Tao was God.” Logos, word, Tao, are all pointing at the same thing.

Consider the prophets in the Old Testament. Their word was considered to have power; it was not just prophetic, it was causative. To be blessed or cursed by a prophet really meant something. Prophets were for hire, and could be paid to bless or curse who you want. There is an amusing series of incidents in the book of Numbers where the prophet Balaam is hired to ritually curse Israel, but Balaam keeps blessing Israel instead since that is the Word he receives from God.

There are also diatribes and warnings against false prophets, those who speak peace when there is no peace. You can think of false prophets as being those who tell people what they want to hear. The king wants to know he will be victorious in battle, so you prophesy victory. Since that is not truly a Word from God it is empty and meaningless, like chaff which the wind driveth away. Again we see the contrast between true and false, real and unreal, rooted and rootless.

This attitude towards blessing and cursing is not just in the Bible. In the Bhagavata Purana, a Hindu scripture revered by worshipers of Krishna, there are numerous stories where a person pronounces a curse on someone in a fit of anger. Later, when they calm down, they have a horrible feeling of remorse, but a curse once pronounced cannot be withdrawn. The Word has been spoken and it will have its effect.

Names of Power

In the Old Testament, the name of God is viewed as holy and having power. It is only to be spoken aloud once a year by a priest in the Holy of Holies, the innermost tabernacle. To this day orthodox Jews do not say the name of God, but refer to God as HaShem, The Name.

In the New Testament the name of Jesus is viewed as sacred, and the name itself has healing power, and power to forgive sins. All prayers are done in the name of Jesus.

You see that same attitude towards sacred language in sanskrit scriptures, especially with the Vedas, which are the oldest Hindu scriptures. The words themselves embody the gods they reference. Sanskrit mantras are still used today and are considered to be repositories of power. I know very good astrologers who provide remedial sanskrit mantras to deal with problem areas in charts. I personally have worked enough with mantras to be convinced that there is something to this notion of words of power.

The quotes by Sri Prabhupada that began this essay embody that attitude towards Krishna. (Sri Prabhupada was a prominent Vaishnava guru, the founder of the Krishna Consciousness movement here in the West and throughout the world.) The name Krishna is nondifferent from Krishna – speak or chant the word Krishna and Krishna is there. I sometimes chant the Krishna maha-mantra and I find the name to have an eerie and distinct power.

All over the world you will find traditions that claim language was originally a gift to Humanity from the gods. Language was given to us by a higher power, and it has a divine lineage. I really think there is something to that tradition.

Language a Sacrament, a Mystery and a Symbol

Here I want to talk about my experience with language from a long time practice of regular bible reading and prayer.

The words of the Bible are symbols of the sacred. Meditate on the symbols and they come alive, they crack open, they reveal their secrets. Slow meditative reading, called Lectio Divina in the tradition, is a way to slowly and meditatively read to internalize the text and allow it to speak to you. Real words are Full – they light up and take on a life of their own, and become increasingly meaningful the longer you dwell on them. There are prayers I have said thousands of times that still become more alive and meaningful each time I say them.

I mentioned the bible here, but I have had similar experiences of sacred language with other writings – the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and some of the writings of Thomas Taylor and the late Platonists come to mind – where the words become bridges to the divine, and meditating on them opens that up. The words become self-transcending, they open up to a reality beyond them.

I have had a similar experience meditating on some of the geometric symbolism from Pythagorean philosophy – on numbers, and on simple geometric shapes like the triangle. The symbols themselves are alive, and meditating on them unlocks their secrets.

Finally and obviously, as an astrologer I have had that sort of divine symbol experience with the language of astrology – the planetary glyphs, the signs, and composite symbols like the Thema Mundi.

These things are alive!

Astrology Symbols & Living Language

I recall an experience some years ago of watching the modern astrologer Heather Roan-Robbins describe the meanings of the three modern outer planets. What was interesting is that as she talked about each planet, her body movements and speech took on the tone of the planet. Speaking of Uranus her speech was sharp, abrupt, fast, jagged with fast transitions, and her arm movements were rapid and angular. The she started talking about Neptune… and suddenly everything slooowed waaayy dowwnnn.. her speech became softer and less distinct, body movements were softer and more flowing, and so on.

Speaking of each planet invoked that planet’s presence. She became the planet she was describing.

My experience is that dwelling on, thinking about, talking about each of the planets, acts as a kind of invocation, calling forth the energy of the planet’s presence. As I said, these things are alive.

That means the words and symbols of astrology MUST be treated with respect, reverence, even with holy awe. They are NOT to be exploited or manipulated to match a political or social agenda – or for greed – or for marketing or public image. You can’t make them mean whatever you want; that would be false prophecy.

I think that is important for all language, but especially for sacred words and symbols – like the Bible, the Gita, the Vedas – and, the symbols of Astrology. We must tell truth of the planets – let each of them be what they are, and resist the urge to turn them into what we want them to be.

This is one of the key points of this essay – If you dare to deal with sacred words, or a sacred art like astrology, you MUST be truthful, or you are setting yourself up for trouble.

Don’t mess with the Gods lightly.

The Word as Fire

There are various metaphors for the creative Word in the Bible and elsewhere. It is described as a consuming fire, or as a double-edged sword, or as light. Using a modern analogy you might conceive of the creative word as like a live wire, a conductor of high voltage current.

There is a reason why priests in many religious traditions have to be purified before entering into the presence of the Holy of Holies with fear and trembling. Entering the Presence of the Holy with an unclean mind, unclean heart, unclean lips, is dangerous. It is like having an old rusty light bulb with corrosion and crossed circuits that you then run a high voltage current through. If you’re lucky – IF you’re lucky – it just burns out. It could very easily explode.

All Language Sacred

It is necessary to realize that ALL language has a creative aspect. Our minds are all of a piece. You can’t make a partition in your mind, and then use language with no regard for truth for personal gain, or for convenience, or to market or persuade others – and then turn around and step into a sacred circle and deal with symbols and words of power.

So if you don’t deal with any sacred language or symbols then you are okay doing whatever you want with language, right? Wrong.

If you have any kind of a living prayer discipline, sooner or later you discover that you are ALWAYS in God’s presence, and your entire being right down to the core of who you are is always open to God’s eye. You can’t easily draw a convenient line between sacred and secular because ultimately there is no division. ALL of life is sacred.

Once you realize that, the logical conclusion is that you must ALWAYS be truthful. Your daily life then becomes an extension of your prayer life, and they must be aligned. If your day to day life is not aligned with your prayer – or, if it is not aligned with what you know to be true – you then experience increasing tension, unease, dissonance, the feeling you are divided against yourself.

Discerning Real and Empty Language

Now that I have long experience with a regular prayer and bible reading discipline, I am much more aware of language. I am much more careful about how I use words, and I also spend much more time working with a quality old dictionary that includes etymology and examples of word usage. (I use the 1828 edition of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary – it is a gold mine and I cannot recommend it highly enough.)

From that experience, I have gotten better at spotting the difference between true and false language, and the difference between honesty and deceit. I can tell the difference within my own mind of their effect.

I also am better at spotting the difference as I talk with others, watching what goes on in my mind and body when I am talking with someone who I think is lying or trying to deceive me, or someone who is using empty words.

Now that I am getting used to what thinking clearly, and telling the truth, feels like, it is much harder for me to lie, or deceive, or deliberately say something in order to fit in or put on a front. Lying divides me against myself; it causes confusion and a kind of inner fog, and greatly increases tension. Whether I consciously admit it or not, part of me knows that I am lying so there is an underlying sense of uneasiness, shame, guilt.

Telling the truth creates a clean, clear, peaceful feeling, and lying creates a dirty, confused and irritable feeling. The difference is very distinct.

False Words

I talked about the quality of true words – they have a clarity, a distinctness, and often a depth, and with some sacred language they get clearer the more you dwell on them. Even with just ordinary factual language there is a clarity and distinctness to true words and true thought.

By contrast, false words are empty. They are clouds of smoke that dissolve and dissipate as you try to look closely at them. The biblical metaphor I mentioned earlier, that they are like chaff which the wind driveth away, is also apt.

There seems to be a connection between false, empty language and some kinds of what you could label evil. Consider the following quote by Hannah Arendt from her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil. The book was written from her experience following the trial of the Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann, and she talks about the strange, empty evasiveness of people who commit evil acts with absolutely no sense of moral responsibility, or sense that they are doing anything wrong.

“Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”
– Hannah Arendt

Remember, the devil is a liar and the father of lies.

Once you know what living and reliable language feels like, Hannah Arendt’s quote is a very good description of the experience of closely examining empty or false or deceitful language. At first it can sound profound, or threatening, or ominous, but the more closely you examine it, the more it just melts away in front of your eyes. I’ll talk a bit more about that later in this essay.

Here is the critical piece: if you practice any form of prayer or magical work, or if you work seriously with astrology, for your work to have power you must be scrupulously truthful. Your spoken word must have power, and words only have power when you speak the truth. Remember, truthful words are rooted in reality, in the source of all; deceptive or untruthful words have no roots, no power source, no energy.

Words spoken in truth are congruent, all of a piece, and the word is spoken with your whole being. When you lie or deceive or cover up you are divided against yourself; it is like you short-circuit your power.

You do not draw the truth of words and their power from yourself personally; they are from a higher source. All magical work partakes of worship and is rooted in worship. I am convinced that includes the practice of astrology. To me that also means that, as an astrologer, you need to have your life rooted in a regular discipline of worship. Your words and your life become an extension of your worship, and your life then becomes integrated, all of a piece. To pray without ceasing means that all of your words and actions are congruent with your prayer life – all your actions become an extension of prayer. All your actions must arise from prayer and return to prayer.

Post-Modernism

Given what we have been examining here, I want to look at why I am convinced post-modernist philosophy is self-contradictory and ultimately robs you of your power.

Post-modernism views language and its use through the filter of power and oppression. Language exists solely for the sake of power. That means it is there to be manipulated, twisted, redefined to mean whatever you want, whatever gets the result you want. The connection between language and reality and truth is completely broken.

As I said earlier I think that is dangerous. It is also a very good way to rob yourself of all real power, all inner integrity – and one of the symptoms of post-modernist language is a certain vague, elusive, slippery, smoky quality – you can’t pin it down, give it a clear meaning – try to and it either just dissolves into nothing – or, more usually, it will shift form and evade, and morph into something else to avoid being pinned down.

I’ve had that experience with some comments on my blog that are best described as personal attacks on me. I don’t like being attacked, so reading them was upsetting. But, when I read them more carefully, either they were making broad, unsubstantiated claims, or the language was vague but meaningless – they sounded condescending and contemptuous and were supposed to make me feel bad. What was most interesting to me is the couple of comments that I took time to think through and then responded clearly. The best way I could put it is that the responses came back at right angles to what I said; they evaded my points and changed the topic just enough to keep their position of disdainful contempt towards me. The best words I could use to describe the feel of it are slippery, evasive, vague, cloudy. After a couple of tries I just quit responding; it seemed pretty useless to dialog with a cloud of smoke that keeps shifting. Trying to argue with language like that is like trying to punch your way out of a room full of cotton candy in the dark, or trying to pick up mucus between your fingers.

The experience I describe in the previous paragraph matches what I mean by empty or false language. That is what it feels like. Once I realized that, there was no threat to me and the sense of irritation or of being attacked just dissolved. I actually wonder more now about how such language must affect the minds of those who live in that world. There is no harm done to me, but there may be harm being done to the attackers.

It is very much like the use of language solely for persuasion, influence, marketing, with no regard to truth – I talked about the distinction between true language and empty and deceptive language, and I find post-modernist language to be very distinctly the latter.

And that in turn is the reason why the one antidote, the way to avoid being manipulated by language, is to be very clear, distinct and truthful in how you use words in your own thinking and speech – DEFINE YOUR WORDS, and know how words are being used against you.

If you can see through the semantic fog of that sort of manipulative language – if you can realize the words being thrown at you have no clear or defined meeting – then they cease to have any power over you. It is like you were facing a conjured up image of a demon in front of you, that ends up being a cloud of smoke that dissipates and is gone.

Factual Language

I want to devote some thought to ordinary every day factual language here. The need to be truthful is every bit as important in this domain of life.

In the realm of commerce, you likely know what it is like to deal with false factual language. You probably know what it’s like:

• to be sold a deceptively described or deceptively marketed product, that ends up being nothing like what you thought you were buying.
• to have important information about a product or service omitted until after you’ve paid.
• to have a problem with a product, called for help and been “given the runaround”.
• to not be told the risks or consequences of a medical procedure until after you have agreed to it and had it.

Our entire world of business, commerce, politics, social interaction – everything is based on an underlying social contract that assumes truthfulness in transactions from both sides. Nothing breaks trust as thoroughly and irrevocably as the discovery that you have been lied to, deceived, manipulated.

Without truth in language, the underlying trust that holds the social fabric together just rips apart, and you get increasing distrust, confusion, disorientation, lack of a sense of reliability, lack of a sense of belonging. You also get a lack of a sense of good will, loyalty, commitment to the society you are part of. Order and trust break down, disorder and distrust increase.

Does this all sound familiar?

Coherency

I want to tie together all of the threads I have been examining here into a coherent pattern.

Honesty – ultimately, it means congruency, things being consistent, and fitting together. Honesty is being all of a piece, and that applies on multiple levels here.

• Congruency in facts, where the words you use to describe things, products, services, any parts of our physical world – where the words match what they are describing.
• Congruency within ourselves – telling the truth being a form of inner alignment, where we say what we think and what we mean. It does produce a sense of inner consistency.
• And, in a larger context, congruency in terms of being aligned with the structure of the universe we find ourselves in. This has a spiritual dimension, and I have discussed that here in ways that I know from experience.

Ultimately ALL of these forms of honesty cohere and overlap. All are necessary.

With truth in language, everything lines up.
Without truth in language, everything falls apart

—
There is a story told of a woman who was speaking with her spiritual leader – this could be a priest, a rabbi, a guru – the specific context doesn’t matter. The woman was telling her leader that she had to leave the community because she no longer believed in God.

After discussion, the leader asked her, “Well, what do you believe?”

The woman stopped and thought for a minute, and said, “I believe that 2+2=4.”

The leader replied, “All right – live up to that.”

—

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay