As a child, growing up watching animal documentaries, I was fascinated by the way animals communicated with each other, both intraspecies and interspecies. Their interaction was at several different levels, from the smallest inaudible ultrasonic chatter to the loudest of cat calls. But the most spectacular of communication by animals was non-verbal and this involves a myriad of colours on display sometimes changing dynamically with the intention of what was being communicated, a choreography of various moves which almost mirrored perhaps what the celestial dance might well be. Now whether it was the dancing peacock in the rain or the beautiful doe doing its routine across the meadow, what was being said by these various beautiful living creatures was of course beyond my understanding then (and still is!), but I do realise that it was a complete and comprehensive, naked, uninhibited expression of whatever they intended to say. It was in your face and upfront. For example an octopus would say what it did, by literally spitting out its ink and with vigorous as well as delicate movements of its multi pronged body almost like a Hindu Goddess!
As humans we have become extremely sophisticated and ‘evolved’ in our expression and linguistics in that, we can say what we have to say and expect that not only we have been heard but also that we have been understood. We may use body language but this can be faked. We often say what we don’t mean and often mean what we are too politically correct to say. Therefore somewhere along the line, the truth or the essence of what we want to convey is lost. Indeed because we don’t trust what we hear or what we are saying, we have invented new ways to lubricate human interaction further and whole new industries have been born as a result. In this respect the mobile phone with a variety of apps, emojis and the internet with email and social media are but only some of the available tools and techniques and many more are in the pipeline. While in many ways this has revolutionised mass communication, it has vastly enhanced our capacity to lie and ‘airbrush’ up our ‘selfies’ and ‘powerpoint’ our presentations. The result is a culture to glamorise ourselves and our wares way beyond what they are worth or incongruous with our fundamental value systems. The way linguistics is developed and designed in the modern world, is to communicate filtered content. There will be times when you say things and the jargon would be such that it would obstruct the passage of certain thoughts very conveniently. The parallel and legacy development of various cultures and their respective languages and dialects has only helped this very convenient human need!
Language is designed to label, to evaluate and to judge, which has been a fundamental human-only attribute. Unfortunately, as result, a peacock with all its colours and dramatics is now demeaned to be just as another bird and a sunset as just another end of the day event. Indeed even a furious, catastrophic, nihilistic event is labelled as a tsunami or a tornado, when actually each of these are experiential wonders of nature represent seduction, and then gentle or more violent forms of orgasms of nature. In this manner, a child mesmerised by the beauty of nature, has its fascination killed once for all by the conditioning power of words and language. Divine inspiration and imagination is killed on a daily basis by the power of words and science which oversimplify mystical, divine and spiritual experiences. Why label them anything with words which mean nothing at all but are in reality entirely experiential. Our language is not designed to describe divine inspiration and certainly is not a tool for communion with the higher universal consciousness. Indeed it often proves to be the barrier.
Language is increasingly failing as a tool of communication. It is therefore entirely up to us to bare ourselves to the soul and express ourselves by using the language that nature gave us which we all understand and speak, and even without uttering a word!
Dr Manpreet Gulati, CEO LycaHealth.
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