Psycholinguistics

Language of the Gods

Sanskrit Bhāsha, meaning language, is often referred to as language of the gods, or Deva-Bhāsha, enabling various modes of Deva communications:

• To: The well known mechanism is that we can invoke, or "worship", a Deva for whatever we wish to manifest in the future.

• Amongst: The vaguely known idea is that Devas self-organize themselves, in their legendary domain of Deva-Loka, within our psyche, in a conflict-free, structured portfolio of our aspirations, as can be seen within many social groups like families, communities, etc.

• From: The most subtle aspect is that they communicate back to us from the subconscious, particularly in our dreams, to guide our intuition.

Recall that Devas are neuropsychological processes come alive in our Mindscape.

Thus, Sanskrit is actually a way to create such Devas in our psyche, because of its psycholinguistic properties - remembering the meaning of the word Sanskrit is itself that which is meant for "perfected creation".

After these Devas come alive in our Mindspace, of course they could very well be having conversations with each other, and inherently with us too, at a deeper level than our surface level consciousness.

Such a language naturally favors oral transmission over the written word, which consequently develops in the speaker a prodigious memory, useful to expand their repertoire in clever conversation techniques, such as the highly praised performers of the avadhānam.

Levels of Resonance

There are four successive phases from which a spoken sound, called Vāni or vāk, passes through before it becomes audible. 

• परा Para - a beyond rational language level so we cannot describe it

• पश्यंती Pashyanti - that which is literally seen in the Yogic Mind of a Rishi

• मध्यम Madhyama - that which resonates in the energy system of the Mind

• वैखरी Vaikhari - that which finally emanates as audible sound

Each of these levels have a different type of resonance.

वैखरी Vaikhari - Physiological Resonance 

Complete coverage

At the core of Sanskrit is a physiological, or biomechanical, aspect to resonance.

The set of core sounds of the Sanskrit language systematically covers the entire vocalizing apparatus to ensure that a through coverage through a kind of sonic acupressure, as such its "alphabet" is not just a list of letters randomly ordered as an afterthought as in English.

Psychogenetic roots

At a deeper level you will see these root sounds are quite familiar, for they mostly come from Nature - such as those uttered by birds, animals, winds, waters, and even machines too. 

Sanskrit's root sounds corpus indicates that we can possibly communicate at some level with all of Creation, which in turn implies that the entire world around is some expression of Consciousness. There are many who have realized this, in their own way, for example by talking to plants, whispering to animals, chatting with dolphins, etc. 

Onomotaepic resonance

In the Western model there is a field of linguistic studies called Semiotics which is the study of signs and what they point to, in which model there is a distinct gap between the signifier of an object (like a name) and the signified (the object itself).

This is very different from how psycholinguistics works. 

In psycholinguistic models there is an natural property of language where the sound carries the actual meaning of the object:

In English this quality is called onomatopoeia, in words like rustle, shiver, thud, where the sounds carry the quality of the meaning itself, and even non-obvious examples such as stable, station, storage (all stemming from when we pronounce with firmness the Sanskrit sth- ound which indicates a fixed place as in स्थिर Sthira (stable) , स्तंभ Sthambha (pillar), स्थूल Sthoola (dense). 

Such use of “vibratory” language is considered a “lower” form of sophistication in Westernized languages, but popular culture such as Rap & Hip-Hop  is reversing the trend.

As a vivid example in Sanskrit, is the Pranava Mantra sounded by Om (= A + U + M), at the start of all Creation:

• covers the head space in from back (A) to middle (U) to front (M) - which is physiological resonance, and

• the three also naturally express how the Universe starts, expands, and collapses.

In Sanskrit there are large treatises on grammar on how to determine meaning, that is शब्दार्थ Shabda-Artha, where:

• Shabda means word, but is actually the whole psychic package that communicates deep knowledge and will reshape the psyche.

• we have already seen the meaning of Artha which is the root or earthy meaning of a word, indicating solidly grounding the meaning.

Transcendental effects

Anuswara

The anuswara (the list of nasal 'n' sounds) activates the आज्ञ Agnya chakra, the location of the intuitive center of the pituitary gland.

• • Notable examples: Tantra, Mantra, Yantra, are some classic tools of consciousness.

  • Also the Anuswara changes its pronunciation depending on the consonant in front of it,

    • e.g. Pankha, Pancha, Pantha, Pamba, etc. 

    • in all of these the n sound is deliberately made to resonate with the sound following it.

Visarga: pushes the sound outwards, at the end of words, which naturally has Prānāyāma-like effects.

Composite root sounds:

• क्ष Ksha: to destroy - sounds like the swishing of a sword as it does its job - thus depicting Shiva.

• त्र Tra -  to protect while expanding - sounds like a weaving loom as the fabric spreads across the Universe without ripping - thus depicting Vishnu.

• ज्ञ Gnya: impacts आज्ञ Agnya chakra, the pituitary etc glands  - initiating intuitive Thought - thus depicting Brhma.

The concept which is being communicated here is that the whole Universe is also a single Being, connected by sound.

मध्यमा Madhyama - Semantic Resonance

The semantic resonance that comes from, specifically, human Linguistic Roots takes this to another level.

Linguistic Roots

Sanskrit vocabulary is based on a corpus of Root Sounds, a lexicon of “atomic” words that have some meaning, and because of their minimalist nature, has survived millennia so they form the core language constructs.

Sanskrit is considered a “perfected” language, and very likely its originators took the pains of incorporating the linguistic roots from across a wide swathe of cultures, which is why it appears as the mother of a whole range of languages. 

It’s oft-proposed that Sanskrit is the root language from which all other tongues have evolved, but leaving aside the egotistical overtones, it is far more accurate to consider Sanskrit as the foster-mother of all tongues that it has taken the effort to deliberately embrace in its glossary of sound-meanings. This has ensured that humanity’s thought streams are always remembered at some deep level, embedded in civilizational memory.

These linguistic root sounds have an additional level of resonance, because they actually indicate basic mental concepts, beyond just being sounds of nature.

Linguistic root analysis forms the basis of Etymology, trying to determine meanings of modern words from their components.

For example, Gene, Generate, Genius in English, and similar words in Sanskrit such as Janani, Jana, Janma, all stem from the same root sound 'Ja' that indicates something to do with Life, and further evolves into these above words.

Attribute-based naming

Surely the most important manifestation of these linguistic roots is how Sanskrit systematizes the naming of objects.

Instead of merely slapping a single label on an object, say “chair”, in Sanskrit the

• Linguistic roots are used as attributes of any object, e.g. 

  • for Lotus flower : जलज Jalaja (born of water), श्रीवास Shrivasa (abode of Shri), पङ्कज Pankaja (born of mud)

  • पादप Padapa: meaning that which drinks water from the “feet” can be used for the roots of a tree, or for a water pump.

• This leads to an infinite dictionary of new words that can be created on demand, given just the root sound lexicon.

A Highly inflected model 

In highly inflected languages, its prepositions, adjectives, adverbs and any other qualifiers of nouns, verbs and word phrases, are wired right into the word or phrase itself.

This technique allows these word phrases to be: transposed around in a sentence and still maintain grammatical accuracy, and their intended meaning, thus enabling more spontaneous vocal delivery of sentences because of this fluidity.

Meter

Since inflected words can be transposed around without losing sentence meaning, thus the poetic effects can be taken to the next level, in a systematic way.

The concept of poetic Meter is called Chhandas in Sanskrit, correspondingly called 'Pā' in Tamizh, where the components of a sentence can be organized in mathematical patterns, e.g. if there is a sentence with say 4 words, then it can be chanted in the following sequence:

1,2 2,1 2,3 3,2 3,4 4,3 - for a simple chanting model

1,2 2,1 1,2,3 3,2,1 1,2,3 ... 2,3 3,2 2,3,4 4,3,2 2,3,4 - called ghana, or dense

One advantage is that this enables absolutely fidelity in memorization and recollection of mantras.

The other major advantage is that the physiological resonance is so deeply highlighted that the mantra gets totally soaked into the psyche, and the Deva, or psychic intelligence, literally comes to life within.

These two effects together ensure that the Deva does not suffer any aberrations in its properties within, thus avoiding the sometimes comic/poignant after-effects as highlighted in many stories, eg:

• Indra vs Nidra - meaning asking for some psychic intelligence, but instead going to sleep

etc

पश्यंती Pashyanti - Thematic Resonance

Sanskrit excels in crafting broad narratives that are so engaging in their obvious expressive forms, and yet deep in their meaning.

Enquiry based

Avoiding fixed labeling of objects has interesting implications

• • There can be multiple names for an object depending on the perspective we wish to highlight in that context

  • In that sense, it promotes highly creative thinking, and yet we can converge to an accepted plausible meaning where the context determines the meaning of the words.

  • Multiple names abound for even characters in Yoga stories depending on what facet of their personality the Rishi wishes to highlight, for example Arjuna in the Gitā has at least half a dozen different names attributed to him, which Krishna cycles through depending on what he wants to emphasize.

Gendered naming

Every single noun in Sanskrit is considered male, female, or neuter gender.

We might ask what is the purpose of this, e.g. why should a table or a chair or bird be gendered? 

Leaving aside the obvious post-modern rants of sexism, the purpose of gendering from point of Storytelling is that this allows us to create a richer characterization of the psychic Beings that we choose to instill in our psyche. 

In our co-evolutionary model, any object can be deified, and gendering is an obvious way to enhance that model.

A Generative Grammar

A Generative Grammar is used to create all & only acceptable expressions from a Lexicon (kosha), and Rules (vidhi).

To contrast, descriptive Grammars, such as in English are used to detect defects in malformed sentences, like we judge the imperfections of others around us, who are not as well formed as we would like them to be - ignoring our own imperfections!

As a side note, this has interesting parallels in comparative Religions too, where on the one side we are all “sinners” who fail the grammar rules of life, but on this side we are all “divine” and perfectly formed - except initially ignorant of our true divine nature.

The real Generative Grammar comes into play though in its ability to generate psychic intelligences, as part of Yoga, so it's not just words that get created, but literally an entire psychic app is generated.

A Knowledge Map

Because the words are based on meaningful sounds, the words and their sentences can form a structured knowledge map, which lends itself to Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Thus, we can:

• translate from one natural language to another with relative ease, to resonate with another native tongue, and 

• do interesting language processing like paraphrasing, meaning restating a sentence in a different way so that it 'resonates' better.

As a side note, this is what we mean by Sanskrit is perfect for computing - it's not a replacement for Java, C++, etc., but more for computer understanding of human speech, i.e. NLP.

Non-Translatables

Many words from the Indian culture are loaded with meaning, in that when translating them it requires that we also bring in an entire framework of thinking in which they are to be best interpreted.

Thus we may find it difficult to translate them into one-word English equivalents and as such they are non-translatables, and their resonant qualities could subtly carry their actual meaning too.

Some such words have become mainstream already, like:

• Guru: remover of the darkness (of ignorance), or heavy with gyAn knowledge (not just a technical expert)

• Pundit: well versed in the canonical literature (not just impassioned & articulate), 

• Yoga: the ultimate mind science (not just stretching, breathing, relaxing)

• Dharma: sustainability (this is the closest one-word translation, and certainly not faith/religion)

These have all become quite well known already in Western cultures, albeit with interpretations that leave much to be desired.

Non-translatables are loaded with meaning, and when used as such, they automatically bring in the entire context of the word ensuring no loss of meaning, and thus they prevent digestion of the knowledge perpetrated by predatory cultures.

Although there are strong claims from Sanskrit to be the root of all Indo-European languages, there is further speculation there could be an even more historical root language called Proto-Indo-European, separate from Sanskrit.