Letting Go of Language - 02.04.10

“We are beings of consciousness,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And yet we have forgotten what consciousness is in our pure form because our minds have been colonized by language.” And as Shunyamurti further elucidates, language is not a neutral means of communication because it comes attached to culture and other temporal, ethical, etc., limitations. “And, because we are embedded in language, we are alienated from the source of our True Being. And then once we are occupied by language—like a city is occupied by a foreign army—then that occupation force takes over and achieves its agenda using our mind and our organism.” And likewise the acquisition of language brings a kind of power to manipulate others as well as our environment. “And it turns out that when our minds are freed from the stream of consciousness we actually reach an ocean of consciousness more powerful than that stream. Our intelligence actually grows. And then we can come back from that silence with an ability to use language now rather than be used by it. . . . And so it is a great exploration that is possible once we weigh anchor and let go of language as our base. And then we are free to explore levels of reality that we could never know as long as we are hooked into the phenomenal plane and its linguistic manipulation." Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 4, 2010.