The Word...part 4

You may ask: "Has the language any relation to the power of the word? Does it matter which language one uses? Must the word be Latin, or Hebrew, or Zend, Eastern or Western?" The answer to this is that in the East each keeps to his own language. Brahmins offer their prayers in Sanskrit, although this is no longer in everyday use; all the same they use Sanskrit for their mantras. A Parsi may live outside his original country, but he repeats his mantras according to the tradition of ancient Persia, though their religion almost passed away a thousand years ago. So you see it does not matter to a mystic what language he is using. He sees the source of all languages in the human heart. Whatever the language - Arabic, Sanskrit, Persian, Hindi - it is still human. The more you study this subject, the more you will see how the source of all languages is one. Even the English language contains words related to Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic. Many names would never be suspected of being Persian in origin, and yet they are. So many names are Semitic, so many are Sanskrit. People never suspect how many of their own words belong to other languages. No language in the world today can claim to be so pure as to have no admixture from others. Any language is really a mixture of many languages.

It is unfortunate that every later language is just a corrupted form of a former one. Hardly anyone would understand me if I spoke of Dar-es-Salam*, but if I say Jerusalem everyone can.

We see how true this is when we study some words of the Bible. Alleluia, for instance, is really Allahu. The order of the letters is changed, and this makes it seem a different word; the spelling is altered because different countries spell their words differently. The vowels and the vibrations, therefore, change to a certain extent, and so the mystics prefer, when possible, to adhere to the original form of the word. It is not because it belonged to a certain language of the past, but because there is actually more benefit to be obtained by using the word in its original form.