The Word as Revelation Names of Gods

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There are two opposing views about language, both advanced by distinguished thinkers. One view holds that a language is external to objects and thoughts; the otherview regards it as fundamental to them. In what sense or senses are these views true? Can they be reconciled?

Language has not merely expressed man’s fears; it has also expressed his sense of mystery. Again and again, man has sung of Gods and Divine Life and his idea of the Good and the Beautiful in sublime speech. This sublime speech, these inspired words, he has treasured as his veritable heritage, his Vedas. But in the passage of time, man’s thought-habits and speech-mores change and the inspired words become difficult to understand. Can a study of language help us to recapture the meanings of older scriptures? Can this study help us to understand the deeper life’ of man, his vision of Gods and the Good? Can this study throw some light on religious consciousness in general and the cherished old scriptures in particular? For example, can we understand the mentality of the seers of the Vedas- humanity’s oldest extant scripture-by studying their language? Or can we understand the import of their language by entering into the state of their mind?

The book studies human speech in its relation to man’s deeper psyche and religious consciousness. It adds a new dimension to the science of Semantics by showing how physical meanings of a word become sensuous meanings, become concepts and ideas, become names of the powers of the psyche, become Names of Gods, depending upon the organ of mind-indriya, manas, buddhi, -which is using that word as also on the level of purity- bhumi-of the organ concerned.

Next, by applying this method of unlocking the highest and the most secret meanings of words, it adds a new chapter to Vedic Exegesis.

Thirdly, refuting that Vedic Gods represent the attempt of the primitive human mind, through Nature’s symbols and objects, towards groping for a unitary principle, it asserts that the truths of the Self can be expressed equally well in polytheistic as well as monotheistic terms, and that One God or Many Gods are opposed only on the mental plane while they meet in the unity of the Spirit.

Fourthly, it invites us to extend this new approach to promote an understanding of several existing religions and many classical religions of the past-of Egypt, Iran, Greece and Rome. Such a study should help the modern Europeans to have a better understanding of their old Gods as also of the Gods of the Africans and American Indians.

Finally, though briefly, the book offers a practical advice. A meditation on the Names and Attributes of Gods has a transforming power not only for the individual but also for his physical, social and cultural environment. As an individual’s consciousness is purified and raised by meditation on the Names of Gods, he becomes increasingly aware of the inertias and impurities around himself and is activated towards achieving a spiritually meaningful environment.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Frawley

David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) is one of the few Westerners recognized in India as a Vedacharya or teacher of the ancient Vedic wisdom. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Vedic topics including Ayurveda, Vedic Astrology, Vedanta, Hinduism, Yoga and Tantra, as well as translations and interpretations from the Vedas. Dr. Frawley has been given many awards for his work in India including the Veda Vyasa award by the International Institute of Indian Studies. He is a Jyotish Kovid through the Indian Council of Astrological Sciences, and is also the President of the American Council of Vedic Astrology, the American offshoot of the Indian Council. He has a Doctor's degree in Chinese Medicine and has also been certified as an expert through the University of Poona for his knowledge of Yoga and Ayurveda. He is presently Director of the American Institute of Vedic Studies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ram Swarup

Ram Swarup(1919-1998) graduated from the University of Delhi in 1941 and had been an original writer and thinker ever since. He participated in his country's struggle for independence, courting imprisonment. For some years, he was a close associate of British-born Mira Behn (Miss Slade), Mahatma Gandhi's adopted daughter. In the fifties he led a movement warning against the growing danger which international communism presented to the newly won freedom of the country. Around 1957, he took to a life of meditation and spiritual reflection, and since then he had made a deep study of the scriptures of different religious traditions. Ram Swarup was a noted writer in many fields. His previous books and brochures include Communism and Peasantry : Implications of Collectivist Agriculture of Asian Countries, Foundations of Maoism, and Buddhism vis-a-vis Hinduism. His Gandhism and Communism stressed the need to raise the struggle against communism from a military to a moral and ideological level. The brochure caught the attention of several US Congressmen, and some of its ideas were adopted by the Eisenhower administration in its agenda for the Geneva Conference in 1955. His Gandhian Economics, small but seminal, shows that the present industrial production system suffers form circularity, a deep internal technological contradiction-coal and iron, and a hundred other commodities symbolized by them, producing and consuming one another in a crescendo, round and round. His magnum opus, The Word As Revelation : Names of Gods, is on Linguistics, Philosophy, Vedic exegesis, and Yoga. It shows how a religion of 'many Gods' represents authentic spirituality.