Today we are going to talk on a very important and also a confusing aspect of spirituality.
And as we walk the path, we hear or we are introduced to a lot of words, new words: enlightenment, awareness, consciousness, presence, stillness, emptiness, oneness. And we read all these different words in different books, we hear them in talks. And as we progress on the path, we then start comparing one teacher’s language, their words, with another teacher. And at the back of the mind, we are trying to work out which term points to the highest truth, which one is more precise, which makes more sense.
And this is what happened to me on the path as well. I used to lie awake at night thinking, “Is awareness different from consciousness? What is pure awareness? Is it the same as witnessing presence? Is stillness a quality of being, or is being a quality of stillness? Or is emptiness the same as oneness or the opposite?”
And this is the nature of the mind. It tries to put all the words together neatly, like you have a kitchen shelf and you have all the jars labeled correctly with whatever is in it. That’s what the mind tries to do with all these words: label them correctly with correct meanings. At the back of the mind is a thought that, “Once I understand probably what the word means or what the word points to, I will be closer to the truth. I will understand what the teacher is trying to say.”
How Words Derive Meaning: Ostensive vs. Conceptual
There is a huge gap between what the words mean and what we think they mean. Today we will deconstruct a bit around what words mean and where they get their meaning from. I will go a bit into the science part of it as well, just to make the process clearer as to how words derive their meaning, and how meaning is formed for conceptual words.
There are two kinds of words that we use in our life. One is words like, say for example, a ball. When we say a ball, the ball is tied to something which is physical. It’s a solid object. I can see it, you can see it. The community can verify the meaning. So if I call, say, a table a ball, you can correct me and say, “No, a ball is physical, it’s round, the table is not a ball.” The word is pointing to something which is solid, which is there in the perceptual or sensory field. A child will learn the ball through see and tell. Someone will show them a ball and say, “This is a ball,” and with repeated understanding and repetition of the word, the child will play with the ball and understand, “This is a ball.”
There is a sensory component to it, and this is called an ostensive definition. This is a linguistic word. I was very interested in linguistics and language, and how language forms words and how we understand meaning. Ostensive definition means the word is taught by an example, by showing something—for example, a ball or a candle. I show the candle and say, “This is a candle,” and then you understand that word based on the physical object.
Now in spirituality, most of the words and the meanings are not ostensive because no one can show and tell. Most of the words are conceptual, so no one can point and say, “This is consciousness, this is emptiness, this is awareness, this is presence.” This is a difference which you will have to understand to make sense of why these words are so confusing and why they are more conceptual rather than something with a fixed meaning.
Networks of Words and Philosophical Disagreements
How do I explain a word for which I cannot point to like a ball? It’s very interesting how you actually learn or understand words which are more conceptual: it is through a network of related words, through explanation, and related categories of words. For, say, awareness, they might have a cluster of words which will point to the meaning of it. Since there is no physical object, the meaning has to be conveyed, and the meaning is conveyed through a relative network of words.
That is where the problem surfaces when you’re using all these different spiritual words. There is no one fixed meaning, and each meaning is then defined by other words, and those other words are then again defined by other words.
For example, I’ll take a simple word, Brahman, which you would have heard hundreds of times. Atman, Brahman—you know these are Sanskrit words—or Nirvana. Now, Brahman is a word, and there have been hundreds of books written to explain this singular word. If you see the treatises on the Upanishads, Shankaracharya has written, and even after all these treatises, the word has different meanings for different schools. Even in Advaita, in this entire philosophical structure, there are different schools of thought which define the word Brahman in completely different ways altogether.
How do you explain that word? Because, again, the word has no fixed object. Since it has no object, I need to explain it with more words. That’s why people have written volumes around Brahman and were still not able to explain it, or they were still having contradictory meanings.
Words as Pointers and Personal Conditioning
Whenever we are hearing any word, especially in spirituality, we need to treat those words as pointers and invitations. What I mean by pointers, you all understand: the finger pointing to the moon. Another word which I really like is an invitation. These words are an invitation for you to explore. The word inherently has no meaning. The meaning has been created or borrowed through all these different concepts.
We talked about ostentation and how a word can have a solid reference, whereas a conceptual word will have no reference. Another issue that comes up after this is that whatever word we think of will have a meaning based on your personal circumstances.
For example, if I give you the word “home,” for some people it will invoke the feeling of warmth and comfort. But for a person who has come from an abusive home, home might mean stress, tension, or violence. The word is the same, but the emotions and the meaning behind the word are completely different for each of us.
If I say the word “dog” in front of 100 people, there will be 100 dogs. Each dog in each person’s head will be different. The moment I say dog, neurologically what happens is not a neat definition that comes up. You will see an image and related concepts. The word dog will bring up a dog, and most probably it will be a particular dog for you. It might be brown, white, or black, a particular breed, along with the associated feelings and emotions. You might be happy hearing about the dog if you like dogs, or it will bring up fear if you’re scared of dogs. A word will depend on your own personal circumstances.
Now, this is for fixed, ostensive words which have a fixed meaning where you can see that object in the world. Still, there is some overlap; we both can kind of agree on what a dog is because there is a common object we’re talking about. But say we come to the word “emptiness.” My meaning of emptiness and the meaning for 100 seekers when I say the word emptiness—they will have 100 different meanings, right? Everyone will have their own history and conditioning of what emptiness means. For some, it might be a great experience. For others, it might be a written word they’ve read somewhere. Of course, there are a hundred different forms of emptiness, but here we cannot cross-check the word with each other.
With a dog, there is a possibility of cross-checking the meaning because a dog has a form. Since emptiness has no form, there is no way to validate and cross that bridge. The only way we can cross that bridge is through more words, trying to explain that emptiness. And those extra words will lead to even more words. At last, you see these are just—at the end, if you see, you’re taking one word, “emptiness,” and taking 10 words to explain it, and then using another 10 words to explain those 10 words. Ultimately, it’s just a hallway of mirrors. Each word points to another word, but they do not convey the true meaning behind the word.
Stepping Beyond the Mind into Consciousness
This has to be really understood when you’re walking the path. If you don’t, then you will be eternally confused with all these different words which teachers use. If you see, Buddhism uses a completely different set of words, and Advaita uses a different set of words.
The word is not the meaning. Even a single word like Brahman, if it needs hundreds of books to explain it, what does it even mean? Even those hundred books disagree with each other. What I’m trying to say is there’s no fixed meaning to all these words. Each teacher has used these words based on their conditioning and how they understood them, trying to use them to convey something. Since what they’re trying to convey is not fixed and is not an object, they use more words to convey it.
The correct way to understand all these words is to see them just as invitations, empty of meaning. The meaning is what you are giving to it, and no two meanings will be the same. Once you understand this, you’ll stop debating and arguing with people, if you’ve understood this correctly. Someone might say, “No, consciousness is everything,” and you would say, “Nah, not consciousness, it’s awareness.” But again, their definition of consciousness might be something else, and your definition of awareness might be something else. There’s no common ground here to compare.
This leads to a simple and very basic observation: words and meanings arise in the mind, and the mind arises in consciousness. So when I hear a word and see the meaning, both of them are arising in my consciousness. That is what the words are trying to point back to. The moment I step away from the word and the meaning into this consciousness, I’m already doing the practice. I’m already on the path. I don’t need to worry about the meaning of the words.
Whenever you hear all these different words and get confused, first ask yourself: “What are they pointing at, and what do I actually understand by it? Do they actually have a physical meaning which I can compare?” We are not trying to say words or language are not important. Words serve a purpose. Language serves a purpose up to an extent. But especially when we are discussing abstract, conceptual knowledge, words need to be seen as invitations only.
Once you start doing that, a lot of confusion, suffering, and heartbreak will fade. Like I mentioned in the beginning, wondering about all these different words—”Is awareness different from consciousness? Is pure awareness the same as witnessing