In this essay we will try to answer a few major questions, such as if teaching people a 
language is about helping them to cultivate themselves or if all language does is 
condition them. Then we will talk about rationality and its role in language and our 
society. We will then briefly talk about art and music and how these things in a way 
are beyond language. We will also discuss the ‘feelings’ of intuition and love, and 
how we have stopped their growth. Then we shall go on to discuss about animals and 
how they do or do not use language, and why they might be more intelligent than us 
because of the very reason that we have a language. Finally we shall talk about 
meditation and how it can help us transcend all conditionings.



Language, what is it ?

To me, the word language1 very much represents a set of sounds that we call words, 
and the nature of words is to communicate a set of ideas or emotions to another entity. 
When we encounter something we have never come across before, we instantly give 
it a name (a tag), and then this tag is what we will refer to is by. In doing so, all we 
are really doing is separating it from the other things around it. 



Teaching people language

From the very first day the child is born, parents look forward to when the child will 
utter its first word. It is notable, that the child makes plenty of ‘sounds’ before it 
utters its first words but the ‘first word’ is apparently very important because it 
signifies the start of the use of language. Then when the child gets a little older (say 
about seven years of age) he is then expected to have completely stopped making 
‘meaningless’ ‘goo-goo-ga-ga’ sounds. In fact he is now expected to use language to 
express his desires and his emotions. It is very clear at this stage that language is 
assumed to be ‘sufficient and complete’. By ‘sufficient and complete’ I mean, it is 
assumed that, (for example) the child does not have any feelings that he cannot 
express to others through language. This assumption that language is ‘sufficient and 
complete’ seems to be completely silly to me! Maybe my point will be best portrayed 
by a question. Why can’t a person remember their ‘baby’ days (when they were 
between the ages of say zero and six)? Is it because now they verbalise all their 
thoughts but in their young days they did not know a language and hence were open 
to and had feelings that they can’t even ‘think of now’ (due to the conditioning’s of 
language) and hence can’t recall them. It is possible that through learning a language 
a child learned to express some feelings but learned to shut out all feelings that he 
could not express in words that others could make sense of. Some people might claim 
that they cannot remember what they did or what their feelings were because its been 
a long time since they were a child and time can make you forget things. My main 
objection to this point would be, how come most people (even when at the age of 
sixty and above) can tell you very detailed stories of the events that occurred to them 
from the age, say approximately fifteen, yet I have yet to meet a person who can 
remember any event in their life between the ages zero and five. 
I feel people cannot remember their baby stage because they were truly innocent and 
free then, free to feel what came to them naturally. However after the ages of about 
fifteen people are so strongly conditioned by language that they now feel a need to 
verbalise everything and stop feeling what they can’t verbalise in their thoughts, and 
even when they are older, they are under the same conditioning’s of language and 
hence can remember (verbally) what might have happened to them when they were 
fifteen!

I have called this section ‘Teaching people language’ and not ‘people learning 
language’ because as shown above, when we teach people we tell (ie. impose on 
them; usually we very very subtly impose on them) what not to do as well as teaching 
them what to do. This is done by judging them by how they act. For example, we 
teach them not to say ‘goo-goo-ga-ga’, by judging them to be stupid or denying them 
of something when they say it, or by rewarding them with something when they say 
only something we understand. Learning is different in the sense that, if a child learnt 
from his environment (and was not taught by it), it would soon pick up language but 
probably would not stop doing the stuff that did not make sense to others (he would 
not stop doing it because he would not be being judged by what he did or did not 
do!). This would be a very good situation indeed, because a child would learn to 
communicate with others, while at the same time not shutting out particular feelings 
that he could not express to others. One might say, having a non-judgemental attitude 
is almost inconceivable by us, because surely we can only respond to words that we 
understand, and in only responding to such words we encourage the child to mainly 
try to use more of these ‘words’. Later on, I will try to show how communication 
beyond language is possible, but for the time being let me just say that, we must at 
least not over-emphasise the few and far between benefits of language or 
communication. 



Language, Rationality, Science, Philosophy and Faith

Many people claim that humans are ‘rational animals’ and because we are rational, 
we have developed a system of logic and our language stems out of this desire to be 
rational. Firstly, I would like to say that we are not rational animals but rather 
rationalising ones. We believe in what we like and do what we like and rationalise it 
in order to make it look as if we are smart (due to social conditioning’s). For 
example, if I wanted to, I could believe that this world is nothing but a fragment of 
my consciousness (very commonly knows as the solipsists view) or I could believe 
that this is real and not a play of my consciousness. Both views are just as valid as 
each other. According to our current model of rationality, both views are just as 
rational as each other. As a consequence, I can believe either one and then rationalise 
it. Hence, it seems so obvious to me that language could not have stemmed out of 
rationality but rather rationalising things has stemmed out of language. This point is 
so very very obvious to me when it comes to science and philosophy2. Science fails so 
badly by its own standards. This is because science is all about ‘finding a reason’ 
(through experimentation) for why things happen. Because science is not based on 
‘rationality’ but on ‘the best rationalisation’ we can find, science contradicts itself and 
proves itself wrong every few decades. For example, Newton said that ‘light’ speeds 
up in water whereas it is now commonly believed that it actually slows down. 
Moreover, ask some scientists today if light is a ‘wave’ or a ‘particle’ and the answer 
they will give is ‘we don’t know’, this is because sometimes we observe light as a 
wave and sometimes as a particle, but by sciences own rational standards it can’t be 
both! Some scientists also go to the extent of claiming that there is no faith3 in 
science. My question to them would be “then why are you a scientist”?, because 
science bases its models and theories on a quark (the smallest particle known to 
man!). But scientists do not know anything significant about a quark, eg. they do not 
have a clue of what it is made up of, or how ‘it’ ‘works’ etc... surely if science was 
rationalistic (be its own definitions), it wouldn’t base all its theories on something it 
knew nothing about! 
No!, rationalism just won’t do, we have to accept ‘things’ like ‘faith’! Moving on to 
the area of philosophy, ‘faith’ seems to be implicitly rejected by philosophers. All 
they seem interested in trying is finding logic problems with arguments! This clearly 
explains why philosophy does not ‘progress’ anywhere. Again and again people have 
come up with arguments for their beliefs, and as said previously, a philosopher will 
tell you that solipsists view of life is just as valid as anyone else’s, because for all we 
know he could be right! Philosophers seem to want to give ‘arguments and reasons’ 
for their beliefs, and as stated above, we are not rational animals but rationalising 
ones, furthermore philosophy will not find ‘answers’ because it is trying to put 
absolute things (things beyond words) into words and hence it fails so badly. In fact, 
recently I spoke to a student doing philosophy and I said to him “I do not thing 
language or reasons can express the absolute reality” and his answer was “what is 
your reason for saying that”. This just showed me just how implicitly and explicitly 
philosophy is based on rationalism! I made up a few reasons (eg. tried to rationalise), 
just like I am making up reasons for this essay, because this essay must be written in a 
language, and if I don’t give reasons for saying why I think language and rationality 
just don’t have the ‘answers’ then I shall be marked down; quite paradoxical really, 
isn’t it? I am not claiming that we should hold inconsistent/irrational beliefs, but 
rather that we should transcend the limitations of rationality and language and see the 
‘bigger picture’!
We can also see that since philosophy refuses (or cannot due to the conditioned 
people discussing it) to transcend language and rationality, it only succeeds in asking 
questions like “is yellow circular or squarish?”. When you try to argue about such 
questions in language you get nowhere because such questions do not make sense in 
language. However there is a song called “Colors of the Wind” in the Walt Disney 
movie (and soundtrack) Pocahontas, and even though it’s title is colors of the wind it 
still makes sense. It can be inspirational (due to the music and the words)  if we do 
not try to rationalise it all the time. We can ‘see’ it and ‘feel’ it at a much deeper level 
than just language. This is something that philosophers miss out on because they are 
too preoccupied trying to rationally argue about questions, be they ‘a priori’ or 
‘empirical’ types of questions!



Language, Art, Music, Intuition and Love

Art and music I feel transcend some of the limitations of language. You can describe 
music (or art) all you like, but you miss the essence of it, this essence that makes it 
music is only capable of truly expressing itself when the music is played. The whole 
‘feel’ about the music is different when we hear it played rather than when we hear it 
talked about. 
Intuition is one of those feelings that we have learned to kill because we could not 
express in language the reasons for our intuition. It is a pity really because intuition 
when ‘developed’ can be a very ‘good’ feeling! For example animals are said to be at 
a very high intuitive level and hence can ‘smell’ love, danger, etc. Pure love and joy 
is something that is everywhere and all around us, yet we have been taught (and 
learned) how to shut it out. 



Animals and Language

One of our most common beliefs is that animals (other than ourselves) are not as 
smart as us because they do not have a language and hence cannot communicate. 
Firstly, if animals do not abuse language (by over-use, like humans do) they have 
possibly qualities such as intuition and that (at least in my eyes) makes them at least 
as ‘smart’ if not smarter than human beings. Unfortunately when we usually measure 
intelligence, we firstly measure IQ etc, something humans made up through language 
anyway, secondly we tend to measure intelligence by the ability to destroy, conquer 
and control. We have the attitude that if we have a ‘bigger gun’ we must be more 
intelligent because we could build it, little do we realise that others might actually be 
smarter because not only could they build a gun, but they chose not to, because they 
could see where it would lead them! The above is a very rough analogy between 
humans and animals but it works okay if we think in terms of the environment. 
Explaining a communication without language is very hard to do in this essay, 
because this essay itself is restricted to language. However, all I can say is, it seems to 
me that animals can communicate not only with their own species but in many cases, 
with the natural environment around them too.



Meditation

The mystics discovered to method of being liberated from not just the conditioning’s 
stated above but all conditioning’s. One of the techniques used in meditation is 
chanting. When we chant the same word over and over again it tends to ‘deconstruct’ 
itself and then we are aware of ‘the word’ (the sound) rather than its meaning or 
where it originated from. This is only the first step however, but it will help you stop 
verbalising your thoughts all the time and then it will lead you to see the unity in all 
things rather than divide them up by giving then labels and tags. A rationalistic 
person might say it shows you the objective reality, however a mystic would probably 
never claim that. A mystic would probably give the analogy of a house. If you take 
away the walls (analogous to the conditioning’s, such as those of language) then 
where is the inside and where is the outside! The distinction between inside and 
outside disappear, the conditioning’s of subjectivity and objectivity disappear. This 
example shows very clearly how transcending rationality does not mean we hold 
irrational beliefs but rather we rise above them both. Language is similar to 
rationality in this sense, transcending language does not mean we stop using 
language, but rather it means that we use not abuse it recognising its ‘limitations’.



As can be seen from the above what we need to realise is the limitation of language. 
Realising this is the first stop to transcending it. Once we are able to transcend at least 
language, we can hopefully alter our state of consciousness and being so that we can 
transcend ‘verbal’ thoughts and eventually transcend that too. If anything, I hope this 
essay has at least shown that our judging the intelligence of animals because of their 
linguistic or communicational skills is not very appropriate. Furthermore, we must 
not abuse language, because it is clear that we condition ourselves and limit ourselves 
if we do so.



Notes

1 In this essay we will use the word language to mean ‘a set of words that are used to 
  communicate’, we will not be referring to body language or gestures when we 
  refer to language, unless specifically stated.

2 When referring to science or philosophy I refer to them as I perceive them today, 
  not as what they are as ideals. In fact in what I would perceive of as ‘good’ science
  or ‘good’ philosophy they would never limit themselves to rationality or anything!

3 Even though faith is one of those ‘feelings’ that is very ineffable, I will speak about
  it a little bit in hope that maybe the reader can at least partially get a picture of what
  I mean!