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You can memorize a song more easily than the same length of prose. Poetry is easily memorized; hence, all the languages which have depended on memory are all poetic, they look like songs, they sound beautiful Meaning? -- you should not ask, because the meaning may be just as stupid as any of today's newspapers, perhaps even worse because it is a five-thousand-year-old newspaper.
When a brahmin is chanting it you will be mystified by his chanting; it creates a certain atmosphere of song. And what is the meaning of what he is chanting? Perhaps the passage he is chanting is a prayer to God that means: "Please destroy the crops of my enemy, and let my crops be doubled over last year's. Let the milk disappear from my neighbor's cows and let all that milk come to my cows." When you understand the meaning, you will say, "What nonsense! Where is the sacredness? Where is the religion? This is religion?" -- but the meaning is not to be bothered about.
The Mohammedan, if you listen to him calling from the tower of his mosque... you will be thrilled with its singsong quality. Arabic is tremendously touching, goes directly to the heart. It is meant to go there, it is not meant to go to your intellect, your reason. It is meant to touch your feelings, and it certainly touches them.
So when you hear Arabic you will be thrilled that there must be something immensely beautiful in it. If just the sound makes you so thrilled and excited, what about the meaning? But please don't ask the meaning, because the meaning is going to be so third rate and ugly that you will not even be able to believe that this kind of crap can be put into such a beautiful language.
Hence it is not to be allowed that the people learn the sacred language, the holy language. It is only for the priesthood -- that is their monopoly.
This is the mystifying. This is a substitute to satisfy you, because they have taken away something of immense potential -- the question mark -- which would have made the whole existence a mystery.
They had to give something as a substitute, a toy to play with. And they are ready with every kind of answer. Even before the child has asked, they
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