Spiritual Forum

At some point in life it becomes very clear: there is a difference between language and reality. Between reality and language there is a medium: the brain. The medium is a sophisticated facility of influence and design. By language the facility is communicating with oneself and others.

Heidegger called the language the "house of Being". Language thus is not identical with Being, but is pointing to it. It is like pointing with a finger to the Moon - the purpose of the finger is accomplished by looking to the Moon. Language is like a donkey - you have a ride on it till you come to the place you want to ride - then you´ve to descend and go within by yourself.

There is a long and interesting history of dealing with language and reality and is called the Universals Controversy. I highly recommend having a research on the subject.

In short: there are two main parties, i.e. two main approaches, and the controversy has not ended yet: one party is considering - having a Platonian view - certain words, so called universals, a real status, they quasi exist really (in Platon´s "real" world). The second party considers universals only as system of order our brain is keeping available. So we have real existance of words versus pure structure of order (provided by the brain)...

It is atually enough recognizing a difference between reality and language - language is only an image of reality. And by taking such imagery too serious (by considering language as 100% identical with reality) we come into trouble. One is an impossibility of seeing differences between facts and demands (we believe are demanding something from us).

Factual statements are recognized by the copula "is": The tree is big. It is connected to states of realities we are able to recognize. Thus the sentence "God is good" is also a factual statement as far as someone recognizes the reality of God - it is not valid to someone who has no relation to a "God reality".

Now there are what I call "different stabilities of reality systems" - some systems are more stable than others. "There is a tree" has another stability than "There is God". This comes from the existential connotation a reality system is basically demanding - a theoretical "God reality" is different than an existential statement. Existential statements have an "inner knowing" rather than believing or guessing. Existantial statements on God are not pure statements of a belief, but statements of knowing without any compulsion to reveal evidences - you simply know.

And here comes the mess of facts and demands. As long as certain reality systems - I speak of spiritual realities - have no real existential grounding, facts are not recognized as such, but as possible demands the adept has to fulfill.

"God loves you" is actually a fact to someone who has an existantial connection, but to others it sounds like: "I`ve got to earn the love of God" or "God loves me only in case I deserve it". Same with other information: "Awakening opens eyes" is a fact to those having an existential connection to the realm of the unseen - to others the sentence appears as demand: "I have to perform certain rituals or recongnize certain teachings in order to get more awaken". The existential one has lost any compulsion to do something, because he recognizes the fact, while the other one is always trying to do something, because he feels himself under a demand. And he will not stop doing so as long as he has no existantial insight.

How comes existential grounding? The experienced one will say: "It simply comes, I don´t know really, how". The demand person will say: "I have to look for it and must try hard". Both are right in their context. And the easy-going one will see here a wonderfull example of duality: from "yes" and "no", two opposites, emerges something new: the fact, that there is a general "yes". This is one of the deepest verses in the New Testament:

2 Cor 1:20: For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ. And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of God.