Language and Spirituality

Following was the post from my very close friend and my thoughts on it. I mentioned to him that this needs to be looked at its core and we will have a discussion on my blog page, so here it is ... 

Post from my friend:

 "Vedas explains - Non-intelligent Humans are similar to animals - Eating, Mating, Sleeping, Defending - (आहार-निद्रा-भय-मैथुनं)
But in today's world (Kaliyuga) - Humans suffer more than animals -
1. Animals don't die of starvation because of artificial shortages created by their own species.
2. Animals don't have to take pills to get sleep (Insomnia/Diabetics/Cholesterol etc)
3. Animals don't suffer heartbreak(s)!
4. Animals don't feel stressed because of overwork or loneliness. (No stress management courses!)
5. Animals don't have addictions (who doesn't know smoking & Drinking is injurious).
6. Animals don't commit suicide!
7. Humans are not afraid of animals attacking them anymore but they are more feared of other humans attacking them (Terrorists, Guns in wrong hands!)
This is because Higher intelligence is used for lower pleasures!!! Wake up, wake up!!! There is a choice to be made! Every day is a new beginning!"

My thoughts:

First of all let me make it clear that when I said that this should be looked at its core which means as per me going to the origin before the advent of any spoken or written language. The language (any language for that matter) is one of the greatest inventions of mankind which helps connecting people and at the same time it disconnects people spiritually. Sounds pretty paradoxical but let me explain. 

With the advent of language, people started coining words for objects - nouns and actions - verbs and adjectives - explaining properties of nouns etc. And with that the world was defined clearly - for example red means this color and blue means that color and shades of myriads of colors - and those who could not recognize the differences were also given names - color blinds etc. Coming back to the point with advent of language the world was divided into millions of fragments and each fragment was given a name. This means this and not that. Probably you see where I am going now ... before the language was born, the universe was one and with language we created gods and demons, heaven and hell, higher and lower, black and white - myriads of distinctions ... And this is what is going against the spirituality. Spirituality is seeing everything together as one whole and if we want to experience that we have to go back to our roots - become as raw as we were before the language came into the picture. I am not saying that we should reject all the material advances that we have made with help of language but train ourselves not to let language meddle in our spiritual growth or rather re-discovering our spirituality. 

You must have heard from many spiritual masters like Osho and J. Krishnamurti that mind muddles your experience. I agree with them and the way I see it is that mind is growth of language. Mind is not a physical entity - it is just a collection of thoughts and what are these thoughts? Thoughts are always thought in language. When one sees some thing a thought immediately pops up in mind - "Oh this is good or bad for me" etc. There is an external stimulus and there is always a word or a sentence popping - this is what mind is. If  one does not let that happen - although deliberately initially, eventually it will happen on its own accord, which will reduce the domination of mind and one will be able to turn off the mind when not needed. We will be able to see and feel the blueness of sky without word blue popping and redness of rose without word red popping and freshness of sea breeze without any words popping. This is what no mind is and this will connect us back to the universe ... and feel the oneness. This is what the spirituality is as per me ...

As for the points mentioned by my friend above, one can see as soon as one drops the language even momentarily, all those disappear as in spirituality there are no means to divide the universe into this and that and the after effects that lead should vanish too ...