Philosophical Speculations

Cleric wrote: ↑Sun Oct 13, 2024 8:29 pm

AshvinP wrote: ↑Sat Oct 12, 2024 11:02 pm

But that sense of being firmly rooted in the spiritual world is experienced when by earnest striving man attains what I have called the “deep silence of the soul.” As regards the force which normally serves him as modified breathing-power, man must learn not to spend this power in the breathing-process for forming words of vocal speech but, as indicated in “Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment,” to hold back what wants to pour itself into words. At the same time, however, he must strive inwardly to maintain that activity which otherwise finds its outlet in the spoken word. This is how he must achieve the inner silence.

Ashvin, thank you for this quote. Few days ago I was experimenting in my meditations along the lines of what we speak of here (before it became a topic here). I was trying to get a feel for the axis of different ways of gesticulating our intuitive life. At one time I was doing some tests with producing vowels while physically inbreathing and outbreathing*. It's funny that I didn't recognize the significance of the fact that we are using breathing in speech. In a way, I was too preoccupied with the investigation of the kinds of gestures, and as such breathing was flattened on the same plane - it was just a gesture. However, when I read the quote above, it struck me how I hadn't paid attention that through breathing we are connecting a different rhythmic scale into the gesticulation and this makes it somewhat distinct compared to purely sign language (that is, it's not only that the larynx is more agile than the hands - it's also that a higher order rhythm passes through it).

BTW I was wondering whether people born deaf, who actually think in sign language, find it easier to innerly 'shut up' Is it easier to stop moving the etheric hands than the etheric larynx, and introduce the soul silence?


* If anyone's interested, more specifically, I was producing an unbroken tone while the breathing cycles naturally alternate. I found it quite difficult not to interrupt the inner sound when my breathing switches between the inbreath and outbreath or vice versa. The way I managed to do it was by smoothly slowing down on top or bottom, to a stop and very gently continuing in the other direction. It's interesting that with our physical larynx it is not easy to produce a vowel through inbreath, and even if we can, it sounds differently, closer to a form of gasping. Yet in our inner voice we can always produce a forward vowel irrelevant of the phase of our physical breath (even when holding our breath). Obviously, this is just the fact that the etheric body is independent of the physical. I don't think there's any special value in this exercise but I decided to share it as curious, nonetheless.

Federica wrote: ↑Fri Oct 18, 2024 8:57 pm Lots of useful info about practical language learning for people born deaf in this video. For example I didn't know that someone who was born deaf and is taught vocal language can then think in an inner voice, speaking in figured-out inner sounds. I am not sure, but my guess at the moment is that innerly shut up is equally difficult, other things imagined equal, for a hearing and a non-hearing person, because it's symbolic encoding - be it in inner voice, in inner signing, or in inner finger spelling - that sucks the thoughts in and confines them in a sort of parallel layer, as opposed to expressive gestures, which both the hands/body and the voice could outerly manifest (but mostly don't nowadays).