Creative Guidance – Language and the Self – Inspirational Educative Articles

Language and the Self:

Without language, all experiences of life merge into a simple experience; they never cling to you. They become nothing other than simple and pure momentary experiences. We use language to remember an experience. We compartmentalize it, play with it, and it just becomes a part of our memory.

We keep comparing all new experiences with a few deeper older ones. By doing this, we can’t see people newly, nor can we experience things as though for the first time. Can you imagine what a sheer joy life would be if you could wake up every morning and not know anything about it?

What would it be like if you saw a person you had never seen before and you didn’t know their name or anything about them? Your eyes would be wide open in curiosity to know more about them. But now, you look at someone and your mind immediately starts comparing – “He is rich, he is poor, he is black, he is white, he is tall, he is short.” In all this, you miss a wonderful opportunity to get to know someone.

Try to imagine that you have not been introduced to such a thing as language. Imagine you don’t know what language is, you don’t know how to name things, and you don’t even know that you exist. Even to say, “I exist,” you need language. Of course, without language you will still exist; you will still walk, eat, and breathe, but there will be no one there to observe that process, and there will be no one there to question your behavior. There will be no one to stand in front of the mirror and say, “I look like this,” because you need language for all these things.

Our world is nothing but a collective word used to describe individual experiences strung together by language. Language is the glue that sticks everything together. The moment you drop language, the whole universe becomes a subjective individual experience. Without language, there cannot be any separation between you and what you are experiencing. Existence is not an inert physical place that you simply inhabit. It is a lot more mysterious than you can imagine. The greatest mystery of all this is, of course, the mystery of you.

“This article is a part of the creative endeavor of Nirvana Foundation and IASBABA.”