| |
of the potato. And then we can tell them 'This is potato.' Then they become aware of the word 'potato'. They learn the word through the picture.
Primitive people live in a pictorial world. That's why the very ancient languages are pictorial -- Chinese is a pictorial language. There is no alphabet, no A, B, C, D -- just pictures. Hence it is very difficult. To be really a scholar in Chinese one needs at least a dozen years great effort, arduous effort because you must know at least one hundred thousand pictures. Only then you can claim some knowledge.
Alphabets have helped other languages tremendously. They are grown up languages. In dreams we all regress back to pictorial language. We again become primitive because dreams come from the unconscious and the unconscious is still primitive, except for those few who have become enlightened. They don't have any unconscious, hence then can't dream.
One thing that one misses when one becomes enlightened is: dreaming. Even if you want to dream, you cannot dream because the whole being becomes conscious. There is no unconscious left, so there is no question of any pictorial languages. And the more primitive people dream in colour. The more sophisticated people dream in black and white.
God is just a picture of primitive people. The very idea of god as a person is primitive, anthropocentric -- we have imagined god in our own image; that is not true, but certainly existence is full of something very mysterious. I call that mysteriousness bhagvatta, godliness -- not god, but godliness. A fragrance surrounds the whole existence not like a person, not like a flower but like a fragrance. You cannot catch hold of it but it is still there. You can only smell it, you can be overwhelmed by it, you have to be very sensitive. It is not a question of worshipping god because there is nobody to be worshipped. It is a question of becoming more and more sensitive, so sensitive and vulnerable, so open that all the mysteries that surround you can penetrate you. Then suddenly one becomes aware that existence is not what it appears. It is far more, tremendously far more. It is simply far out! It is unbelievably,
|
|
|