Author: Ram Swarup
Publisher: Voice of India
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 188
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8185990689
Description
This book explores the core issues of religion, culture and spirituality for all humanity. It examines speech, language and communication starting from an ordinary level leading to the human attempt to communicate with the Divine and the Infinite.
There are two opposing views about language, both advanced by distinguished thinkers. One view holds that a language is external to objects and thoughts; the other view regards it as fundamental to them. In what sense or senses are these views true? Can they be reconciled?
This book studies human speech in its relation to man's deeper psyche and religious consciousness. It adds a new dimension to the science of Semantics by showing how physical meanings, become concepts and ideas, become names of Gods.
Language has not merely expressed man's fears; it has also expressed his senseof mystery. Again and again, man has sung of Gods and Divine Life and his idea of the Good and the Beautiful in sublime speech. This sublime speech, these inspired words, he has treasured as his veritable heritage, his Vedas. But in the passage of time, man's thought-habits and speech-mores change and the inspired words become difficult to understand. Can a study of language help us to recapture the meanings of older scriptures? Can this study help us to understand the deeper life of man, his vision of Gods and the Good?
The book offers a practical advice too. A meditation on the Names and Attributes of Gods has a transforming power not only for the individual but also for his physical, social and cultural environment. As an individual's consciousness is purified and raised by meditation on the Names of Gods, he becomes increasingly aware of the inertias and impurities around himself and is activated towards achieving a spiritually meaningful environment.
MEDIA COMMENT:
The writer is not merely a scholar in linguistics. He is a mystic too, and he gives a rational explanation of the four levels of speech, 'para', 'pastanti, 'madhyama', and 'vaikhari' and their location in the consciousness of man. He points out how in all religious and occult traditions the names of God are held to be secret. The chapters on the names of Gods in the Vedas are superbly illustrated and demonstrate the deeper logic of calling the different Gods by the same Name and the same Gods by different names. - The Hindu
Contents
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