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again. But with my speaking it is not possible to go back. What is missed is lost. The knowledge of what is spoken is lost forever if missed and cannot be repeated. This keeps your attention at a full peak. It helps to keep your consciousness at its maximum alertness. When you read at leisure, if something is missed there is no harm; you can read it again. With a book, understanding is less and the need for repetition increases. As attention decreases, understanding also decreases.
Therefore, it is not without reason that Buddha, Mahavira and Jesus all selected speech as the medium for the transmission of their message. They could have written, but they selected this medium. They did it for two reasons: One, because the spoken word is a more all-encompassing medium; more can be said. There are many things attached to words which are lost in writing.
That is why, if you think about it, you will notice that the day films began, novels lost their importance. This is because films made things alive again. Who will read a novel? It is a dead thing. The novel cannot live much longer. It may become lost as an art form because we now have mediums that are more living, what McLuhan calls "hot" mediums. Television and films are live mediums, hot mediums. There is heat in their blood.
But the written word is a cold medium, dead cold. There is no life in it; no blood flows in it. Even your telephone may become outdated as soon as phonovision comes, just as radio began to become outdated with the coming of television. Radio has become a comparatively colder medium while television is a hot medium. And to me speaking is a hot medium; there is blood and heat in it.
So far we have not been able to find enough ways to add emphasis to words that are written. If I want to emphasize something when I am speaking, I can speak a little louder. I can change the nuances in my voice, my voice rhythm; then emphasis is conveyed. But in the words of a book there is no such way. The words are just dead. In a book, the word love is love whether it was written by a person making love or by one not making love, or by one living in love or by one who does not know what
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