Language and Truth

Paul Douglas

• Publisher: Shepherd Walwyn Publishers
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780856833717
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book explores the nature of human language, its relation to truth and to the natural laws of the universe. It focuses on truth according to DaVita (non-dualism), and concentrates mainly on the Sanskrit language. The author draws on his long experience as a student and teacher of both DaVita and Sanskrit.He identifies some principles of Advaita which are particularly relevant to human language, such as the primacy of consciousness, unity in diversity, and sound as the basis of the universe. He then compares Sanskrit, English and Mandarin in the light of these principles. What follows is an investigation of how far the basic elements of the Sanskrit language such as its alphabet, its roots and the deep structure of its grammar, may be seen as the expression of such principles. The book continues with an examination of the fundamental nature of words, of sentences and of meaning, all of which are illumined by insights into the deeper significance of the sound and structure of the Sanskrit language. What emerges is a radically different view of language from that found in most modern Western philosophy. Human language is seen as having an innate capacity to reflect the light of consciousness, the primary element of the universe, and evidence is provided to show the extraordinary reflective capacity of the Sanskrit language. Many books have been written on Advaita, but the combination of Advaita and language as tackled in this book may be unique.

Chapter 1

Different premises on which language may be founded

1.1 Various views and explanations of language have been expressed over the ages. Each depends on the premise on which it is founded. It is not the purpose of this book to investigate these premises, but it may help set the scene to give a brief description of how language is seen from certain premises, including particularly the Advaitic premise.

Advaita

Advaita is a Sanskrit word which translates as Non-duality. The Advaitic premise is that reality or truth is one, totally still, yet all-pervasive, pure, omniscient, partless, conscious and self-existent. The apparent multiplicity of the world is not real. In truth it is one. The seen is no different from the seer, as in a dream. The multiplicity is in name and form only. These forms reflect the unity to a greater or lesser extent, as in humans, animals, plants and stones. Our true nature is identical with the nature of the One Self. The nature of the One, the Self, the Absolute, God, Brahman, is existence, consciousness and bliss – sat, cit,

nanda in Sanskrit. The universe appears as an expression of the nature of the Absolute, through the powers or forces of the Absolute. This manifestation has three stages or worlds: causal or spiritual; subtle or mental/emotional; and physical/material. When any of these terms are used in this book, they refer to the relevant world.

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1.2 An Advaitic View of Language

How then can there be an Advaitic view of language? In the same way as there is an Advaitic view of the world. This oneness is expressed by sound in the natural language. The sounds we can hear in human language are not that natural language, but are reflections of it, however distorted.

The world is an expression of the substance of the One as name and form. This creative process begins with Om

, the original causal Word, sound or vibration of energy. The opening statement of the M

kya Upanishad says: ‘The Word

is the Imperishable; all this its manifestation. Past, present, future – everything is

. Whatever transcends the three divisions of time, that too is

Originally there is only one word or vibration, yet this word continues to sound throughout the universe. There are obvious parallels with the opening statement of the Gospel of St John, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’, and at the material level with the view of astrophysicists that the universe began with an enormous explosion of energy which is still vibrating and expanding. Bhartrhari, a language philosopher who lived in India in the 5^th century CE., described the first step in language as a flash of consciousness called a sphota, literally, ‘an explosion in consciousness’.

The universe is said to be spoken into existence. ‘God indeed was one and alone. Speech was his own being. Speech was the second to him. He said, “Let me send forth this speech. She will go and become all these various things.” ’ (Kathaka Samhit

) ‘All transformation has speech as its basis, and it is name only.’ (Ch

ndogya Upanishad 6.1.4) A twentieth century exposition of this was given by

nt

nanda Sarasvat

: ‘Brahman is the word and the word is Brahman. The consciousness first originates as word. The subtlest form becomes coarse. The word is subtle and things are coarse…. World comes out of the word and, having existed, it will merge into the word as systematically as it appeared from the word’ (1991 Day 5). This is why creation is said to be formed with and maintained by the natural language, the grammar of which is the natural law, dharma.

The sound or vibration of energy which gives rise to everything in this universe arises in consciousness and is eternal. The sounds arising through air as in human speech, are in space and are transient. Human language is a reflection of the natural language, even though it may be a distorted one. In human language words, said to be eternal in essence by Bhartrhari and other Advaitists, find expression in stages, from the subtlest level to the final stage of speech. In this system the sentence is an expression of the unity, one indivisible whole, while the analysis of the parts of a sentence and of individual words is just to help with understanding. Close attention to pronunciation and grammar is necessary for appreciation of subtler levels of meaning and spiritual significance. With this close attention the all-pervading consciousness becomes more apparent.

In this view, the form and sound of a language determines how far it can express and reflect the truth. Language lawfully formed has the capacity to reflect the natural laws of the universe. Sound is held to be of fundamental importance, and the qualities of sounds in the basic elements of a language, such as its alphabet, therefore go a long way to determining the real differences between languages, and their capacity to reflect the truth.

1.3 Views of Language in the West

In the West, the Middle East and the Far East greater emphasis has been given to the written word, in contrast to the Indian subcontinent. Indeed the word ‘grammar’ originally meant ‘the art of writing’. Much attention has been paid to the calligraphic arts in Christian, Islamic and Chinese civilisations, even after printing was originally invented in the 12^th to 13^th centuries in China and greatly developed in the 15^th century in the West. On the other hand, the science of phonetics was much more highly developed in the Indian sub-continent in the millennium before Christ. Four of the six branches of the Veda, called Ved

ngas, are concerned with language, the first being pronunciation or phonetics, the second chanting or metrics, the third grammar, and the fourth etymology.

Among the earliest known views on language expressed in the West are those to be found in the writings of Plato and Aristotle in the 4^th century BCE. Very broadly the Platonic view could be classified as rationalist and the Aristotelian view as empirical. In the Platonic dialogues, the theory is developed that visible objects are passing representations of long-lasting or everlasting ideas. A particular car lasts for a certain time and then is destroyed or disintegrates, whereas the word ‘car’ continues, and while it continues further physical cars can be created. If truth is equated with eternity then the word ‘car’ is closer to truth than a physical car, and in a way is the cause of the physical car. Aristotle took the view that the relationship between words and objects consisted of resemblance and convention. Words represent objects, and there is a convention about which words represent which objects. Augustine in the 4^th Century CE, reiterated the view that words represent, and signify, objects.

Mediaeval philosophers were interested in what thought and language are, and how they arise. There were two main theories about thought. The Aristotelian view, held by the earlier philosophers such as Aquinas in the 13^th century, was that the mind takes on the same form as the things represented, and presents likenesses or pictures of them. A table in a room and in the mind are the same thing under two different forms of existence. Words describe this thing. Later mediaeval philosophers, such as Ockham in the 14^th century, held that intuitive cognitions produce concepts which have objective existence in the mind and are caused by the objects they represent. Again words are descriptive. In both views the world holds a multiplicity of objects, whether physical or mental, and there are a multiplicity of minds experiencing them.

1.4 An Empirical View of Language

With a decline in the authority of the Church, modern Western philosophy began in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with philosophers such as Descartes and Spinoza, who used reason as their guide, and were therefore called rationalists. However by the end of the seventeenth century this view, which produced a number of conflicting philosophical explanations, was being discredited. The view which emerged in striking contrast both to the rationalist and Advaitic views, and which has continued to the present day, is the empirical view. This is based on the premise that the world and its multiplicity are real, with all knowledge coming initially from sensory experiences of the world. Language is derived from this source and is not innate. For example John Locke, the 17^th century English philosopher, believed that simple ideas come directly from sensory experience, and complex or abstract ideas, such as ‘man’ or ‘beauty’ are based on a number of simple ideas. Complex ideas are made by abstracting common characteristics from special characteristics of individual things, for example, experiences of different men from which one deduces the idea of ‘man’. These ideas all derive ultimately from sensations either from within or from outside the mind. To the empiricist words are articulated sounds used as signs or labels for ideas. There is no natural connection between the sounds and the ideas.

In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, with the increasing scientific emphasis on empirical forms of investigation, the empirical view of language grew in strength. In the first half of the 20^th century philosophical schools of thought such as logical positivism (sometimes called logical empiricism) concentrated on the investigation of language. Such philosophers were concerned with identifying the truth or otherwise of statements, but as their premise was that a proposition only has a meaning if there is in principle a means of verifying it, they rejected all theological, metaphysical and ethical statements as lack...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Pronunciation Guide
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 - Different premises on which language may be founded
• Chapter 2 - How may different languages relate to truth?
• Chapter 3 - Basic elements of language as evident in Sanskrit
• Chapter 4 - Words: their formation and classes
• Chapter 5 - Sentences and relationships within them
• Chapter 6 - Sound, Word and Meaning What is meaning?
• Chapter 7 - Pinian grammar: some special features
• Chapter 8 - Laws of Sanskrit reflecting natural laws?
• Appendix 1 - Checklist of the credentials of the Sanskrit language considered in this book.
• Appendix 2 - The extent of Sandhi
• Bibliography - (principal references)