Analogue 6: The Ocean of Language

ANALOGUE 6

The Ocean of Language

The names we give to things in this world create confusion and turn our

hearts away from what is real to what is unreal. For example, the one who hears the name “God” does not perceive what is real, but is made to think only of what is unreal. The same is true for the words, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, life, light, resurrection, and church—all these terms take us away from reality into illusion. They succeed merely in leading humanity to death, for they exist only as constructs of this world. If, however, we were to exist in the Aion—that realm transcendent to space-time—then nothing named in this world would be considered evil, nor would we see ourselves merely as temporal creatures, for each being has a destiny in the Transcendent Realm (the Aion).

 

There is one name, however, that is unrepeatable in this world. It is the name, “(Abba), Father” which has been given by means of a Son. This name is honored above all other names, and if this name had not been given to him as well, the Son could not become a “Father.” Those who possess this name can perceive it, but never adequately speak of it, and those who do not possess it can never even conceive of it. For our sakes Truth begets names for everything in the world, and it is impossible to know anything without them. One alone is truth and yet she makes the many, and by means of many things she lovingly teaches this one truth alone to all.

 

 

SYNOPSIS

 

• A discourse on the benefits and limitations of humanity’s greatest gift

—language.

• An implicit theory of language and consciousness.

• The principles of spiritual linguistics beyond the perspective of this

world: What is the referential hierarchy?

• A definition of nominalism.

• Language as metaphor and sign pointing to that which is beyond

language: the principle of metaphoric, poetic and metaphysical

expression, and of seeing from a different domain.

• The principle use of Analogue—the use of the analogical imagination to access higher reality.

• Mystery: The embedded hierarchy of signs, symbols, names and language. The metaphysics of the Aion and "aeonian time."

• The stunning metaphysical statement concerning evil in light of the Aeon (the good), the eternal nature of humanity, and the source and destiny of all creatures and created beings.

• The nameless Name -- the "Beyond Names" of the Source—who is the Father/Source.

• Yeshua names the Unnamable Source “Abba".

• The Fathering principle and the receptivity of the son; the son’s

capacity to receive that which is transcendent to us or beyond our

normal limitations.

• How truth works through language.

• The wisdom principles of feminine Sophia, both as the divine

principle of truth and as the Namer.

• The mysteries of the One and the Many and learning Wisdom’s principles of duality and Oneness under her tutelage.

 

 

COMMENTARY

 

A Mighty Sea

 

Language is at the heart of human experience and of what it means to be a human being. It is used prolifically by our species; it is our native environment. We live surrounded by and immersed in language just as fish live in water. It is perhaps the most fundamental element of what it means to be human, but like the air we breath, it is easy to overlook it or to take it for granted. it is so natural to us that we use it without realizing its presence or how we rely on it daily to navigate our lived experience.

We are thrilled, of course, when our children begin to say their first words and then to communicate with us in complete sentences. Quickly, and at a very young age, they are speaking in complex ways and using language naturally. Who would we be as a species without this? It is the greatest of all our gifts and abilities. Human society and civilization are based upon this capacity and on our ability to use it to transmit knowledge from one generation to another. Without language, we would have a much reduced sentience.

 

Linguistics and the Science of Language

 

Linguistics, the science and study of language, is one of the most distinguished fields of research in the humanities. Even when we are not studying this instrument directly, we are using it to examine and analyze everything else. For culture, language is at the heart of all that we value as a society. It creates the world of human civilization, allowing us to pass along the increase of our knowledge and understanding to people in other places and times.

We think, and our thoughts largely pass through our mind by means of language. We dream in images accompanied by language. Certainly we experience a world beyond language, but as soon as we attempt to describe our experiences, we are back inside the world of language. Many linguists such as Noam Chomsky have described our linguistic world as a house in which we live and through its structures (walls, windows, and doors), we are able to perceive the outer world. Until we learn a language different from our mother tongue, it is difficult to realize how much language shapes and determines the way we see the world and defines our experience. We do not seem to be able to create meaning without it and we need it to facilitate significant contact with one another.

 

Language as Lens and Illusion

 

As great as this gift is, however, language has severe limits, for while it reveals parts of the world to us, it also conceals many aspects of it. As the Gospel of Philip suggests, language helps us to understand, but it also confuses us. By assigning names to things and using these designations exclusively, we often imagine that we understand them, when, in fact, we are only pointing to them as objects—their reality lies elsewhere. In addition, language often cannot describe the essence of a thing, only its surface characteristics. Typically, we must go beyond these descriptions to experience the thing itself, to discover its inner depths and truer nature.

We may point to and name a bird or a plant, for example, without knowing its habits, its inner experience, and its more hidden physical characteristics and behaviors. In some sense, just knowing its name and being satisfied to stop there creates only the illusion of true knowledge—because we can recall its name we imagine in some way we know it, but the truth is we don’t. Seldom does language place an object (or being) within its full ecological environment. When we name it, typically we see it as distinct from everything else, though the truth is, it is actually a part of a much larger whole.

Language, then, acts as both obfuscation and revelation at all orders of being and reality. The higher and more complex something is, the more likely it is that what we name something misses the truth of it almost entirely. In spiritual matters this is particularly true. Just because we can use the name God, Spirit, life, truth, or resurrection in a well informed way (and perhaps even in a theologically accurate sense), does not mean that we either actually understand or have experienced those things directly. This is the problem of language, and spiritually speaking, it often becomes a trap for us—hiding the truth, rather than revealing it, making us think we understand something, when in truth we only know its name. We are aware of it, but have no actual direct personal experience of it. Philosophically this is an aspect of what is called nominalism—knowing something by name only and not through personal experience.

 

Truth Transcends Language

Though we may have been in touch with ancient sources of knowledge, encountering truth that has helped us learn and name things, if we cannot get beyond the name to the experience of it or to direct experience of it, the name itself may falsify the truth for us, leading us to into a death-like state (devoid of the actual life of something—knowing only its outer shell).

 

This analogue posits two (if not more) levels of reality and suggests that language has been constructed in and by this world and primarily for it. Language is not adequate to describe the various levels of transcendent reality that exist beyond it. Nevertheless, given this caveat, Wisdom herself has been constructing names and languages for us, and teaching us and trying to assist us to go beyond language. The truth appears to be that we have to go through language in order to get beyond it, deeper into the reality of things. Perhaps we must experience being trapped by it in order to transcend and be freed from the trap. This may be Wisdom’s strategy, helping us through until we can escape language and direct experience into the fundamental and unique nature of truth which is part of a Whole that is One, and the most Real.

 

Access to the Great Age

The teaching of this text seeks to give us access to another realm, another temporal reality called the Great Age, which was described earlier in Analogue 3 as Summertime. This realm appears to contain all time and all times—all history and temporality. Though it may seem inaccessible to us in our present realm, given proper keys, we can unlock and enter the Great Age of the Eternal Now and begin to know its truths and realities even in the present moment.

One singular truth is that we are of its substance, eternal and not temporal, where truth is perceived in an entirely different way. Perhaps we could say it is perceived holistically or integrally, without the dualisms of good and evil. Is this because evil does not exist there? Or might it be said that in the Transcendent good and evil have been balanced and integrated in some new way exceeding our definitions entirely?

 

Many Meanings of Father and Source

This analogue declares that In that Kingdom (or Realm) of the Great Age, one name stands out as supreme, which is Father, the name used by Yeshua in an attempt to get beyond language itself to communicate his own direct experience with that Reality. This appears to put us right back in the same conundrum (especially because of the way in which this word “Father” has been used and misused in patriarchal society). The word Father in his Semitic language had a dual meaning as it does in other languages. It is obviously the male person who helps to beget humans in this world. Beyond this, however, it refers to the ultimate Source of All. The way Yeshua is using it, the term implies not only to that the ultimate Source which can be known, but it also can be experienced in deep inner intimacy, which is the primary experience that Yeshua has known. Yes, their is Source, but for him, perhaps given the details of his own autobiography, to have a direct intimate knowing of that Source as like having a loved father-parent present.

When we say that George Washington was the Father of the United States, we can understand better the metaphoric ambiguity of the term we are using. Washington did not obviously produce this country through procreation, and yet there is truth in saying that he was its father. All theological language is similar to this. It is at once not literally correct and a necessary metaphorically in order to communicate something important. Once we start using language metaphorically, especially in the realm of spiritual realities, it becomes important not only to use a term understanding its nuances but, the text says, even more critical to actually become the very word we are using. This concept of becoming the metaphors we use is a key issue in this Gospel and clearly is related to the transformation of human being itself. Philip believes that when Yeshua began to use the term Abba it was because inwardly he had become “father-like” in an essential way. He was not only in deep connection with the Source in an intimate way, he was also becoming Source; in being one with the Source he came to possess its same essence and energies and could no longer be described as separate from it. This is a profound mystical understanding, which, like most mystical descriptions, is difficult to describe through language. As soon as you use language to describe these relationships and nuances, you are immediately in a realm of paradoxes.

 

Wisdom’s Deepest Teaching

 

We see ourselves as separate from and unlike other things. But to truly get to know something well, you must in some way become them, or come into deep relationship with them through a common identity. Often in these kinds of relationships, identities merge, which changes the nature of both. An example might be that in order to get to know a country, you must come to identify with it, becoming one with it. In this way you learn to know it from the inside and not merely as an object of study observed from the outside. The truth that Philip is teaching may perhaps exceed this example: in order to know

something, one must fully become the thing itself. Again, this is a very deep mystery, and it will be explained more fully as we move through the text. This analogue simply sets out the principle as one of its first objectives and ideals.

It is in this analogue that Philip begins to describe the central work of Wisdom as a feminine principle who is nurturing us in truth and preparing us to become one with the truth of the hidden unity of all things, which we might call Interbeing. When we start learning language as a child, we name things and separate them out so that we can distinguish between them. Often what we learn is how things come in pairs of opposites, as we have seen. These are true distinguishing features and our language a can describe them. Again, because of the way language is being used we imagine that duality is fundamental to existence, but sacred Wisdom knows that this is only appearance. The deeper mystery is unitary being which can be known as an integral whole. This is part of Wisdom’s deepest teaching, and she intends to teach this great truth, the truth of the Oneness to all. We will need Wisdom’s nurture to learn it, and we will need direct experience with it, and a sense of flow into that oneness. And then language itself must attempt to catch up to our experience, and even there Wisdom will help us in assigning language to these deeper mysteries of unity.

 

 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

 

1. Two modern linguists, Sapir and Whorf, have also described and studied language using the metaphor of a house that we live in that then shapes our understanding of the world. When or how have you experienced the world differently because you were using another language? Or, as the house of your native language expands and grows, how has that changed the way you perceive the world around you?

2. The Gospel of Philip is cautioning us to be wise in our use of language (especially theological language) in order to avoid many of its traps. Put this cautionary teaching into your own words. How might you have fallen prey in the past to theological traps and linguistic prejudices?

3. Explore James 3:1-18, another passage from early Christianity that gives similar linguistic cautions.

4. With the linguistic nuances of this analogue in mind, how might you begin to understand the fundamental terms that Christian teaching uses: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, light, life, resurrection, and church? How might these be or become illusory terms? How might they also help you to understand a deeper reality?

5. How is the term God problematic? Interestingly, how might our use of it lead some people directly into atheism?

6. Yeshua, it seems, had a very clear idea about the term Abba.

When you see that word used in its various translations, what does it mean for you? Might your use of it be so illusory that it leads you astray? Might it even spiritually kill you?

7. How does language program us to see and experience ourselves?

8. How might Wisdom have taught you a new form of linguistics through her use of language which takes you beyond mere human words to other forms of sapiential discourse?

9. What is the “one truth” that Wisdom is teaching to all?

10. If, as for Yeshua, the son becomes the Father, is there an equivalent process for female persons? Might this be a difficult limitation of language evident in the very sacred tradition of Christianity itself?

11. What does it mean to become the thing you know? Have you ever experienced this in some manner, or with certain subjects?

 

Note for Reference and Study

 

A. The study of contemporary linguistics is a vast field with many important names and researchers who have helped shape it. It is subdivided into many areas having to do with living and ancient languages and how they work. Phonetics and phonology, syntax and morphology, semantics and pragmatics, and historical linguistics are part of this field as are psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and comparative linguistics. Each of these have something important to teach us. One of the most fruitful aspects of these has to do with the deep structural similarities of languages versus their surface structural differences (called Transformational Grammar). Another important linguistic study is developmental: how languages are learned and come to be used. This text has a nascent understanding of many of these issues, particularly how they affect the spiritual development of human beings as they navigate through the ocean of human language.

B. A unique aspect of Semitic languages is not simply their unusual syntactic structures (based on triple consonants in verb formation) but how they use language in more metaphoric ways than is perhaps the case in Indo-European languages. The semantic content of Semitic languages is to use metaphors concretely, whereas Indo-European languages use language more abstractly with many more propositional statements. In the West we make more declarative statements about truth. Semantic languages tend to be more descriptive, filled with metaphors, using narrative rather than expository or philosophical language.

C. The Great Age has already been described metaphorically in this Gospel as Summertime, but in its original use and meaning the term Aion (aeon) refers to an Age of time which is also called the Age of the Ages—the great expanse in which all time is held, and in which time unfolds in epochs. As we have seen, however, the Aion is not simply the collection and summation of all time, where everything is held in the Eternal Now, it is also that reality in which time as such ceases to exist and only timelessness remains. It is hard to imagine or put this into words, but it can be experienced.

D. A later Jewish aspect of this same teaching comes to be expressed by the tradition of the Kabbalah, which is a serious and deep teaching of later Jewish mystical tradition. The roots of the Kabbalah perhaps began in the pre-Christian era, but its later formulations are better known. One of its characteristic features is that the Source (known variously as the Endless Infinite Reality or the Ein Sof when it expresses itself in Being) is also the Crown of the creation as it flows into the world of duality. One side of that expression has a masculine characteristic and the other a feminine. Combined, these two elements make up what we call Creation itself. The dual manifestation of the Source in the creation appears also to be understood by this early mystical text.

E. The formal philosophical doctrine of the One and the Many describes Ultimate Reality as made up of this mixture of the many myriad things that constitute duality as well as their integration in a Unity of Being where each has its place and yet is united to everything else. In this text Wisdom herself is said to teach this essential doctrine as one of Perennial Wisdoms deepest mysteries. What we can say is that the One Source in its expression as Mother, gives birth to the many things, and yet the truth of the many things is that they all belong to the One Source, united and in deep familial relationship as a Unity of Being. This Oneness is somehow non-dual, and yet containing and expressing all expressions of duality which make their significant contributions to the Whole.

 

Notes to the Translation

• The terms “real” and “unreal” are based upon the Coptic sense of something being either “established” or “not established” though it may have qualified existence.

• The word “illusion” is the same word for “unreal”.

• The realm transcendent to space-time is the Great Age, the aion.

• The word “unrepeatable” could also be translated “unutterable,”

which is a very Jewish understanding of the sacred (and the secret

Name of God) which, in the Jewish tradition, is not uttered (YHWH).

• The phrase, “this name can be conceived” could also be translated, “this name exists in thought”.