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Spiritual Matters

Communication & Language

“in English….I find but one word to express,

perhaps, twenty different ideas, in the Eastern

tongues, especially Sanskrit, there are twenty

words or more to render one idea in its

various shades of meaning.”

From H P Blavatsky’s Indian Metaphysics

 

H P Blavatsky explores the difficulties of discussing

Metaphysical ideas in a European language

Posted 27/12/06

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This extract is from Indian Metaphysics by H P Blavatsky in which she outlines the advantages of using Sanskrit terms to convey esoteric concepts.

 

But can one really discuss metaphysical ideas in a European language? I doubt it. We say "Spirit," and behold, what confusion it leads to. Europeans give the name Spirit to that something which they conceive as apart from physical organization, independent of corporeal, objective existence; and they call spirit also the airy, vaporous essence, alcohol. Therefore, the New York reporter who defined a materialized Spirit as "frozen whiskey," was right in his way.

 

A copious vocabulary, indeed, that has but one term for God and for alcohol! With all their libraries of metaphysics, European nations have not even gone to the trouble of inventing appropriate words to elucidate metaphysical

ideas. If they had, perhaps one book in every thousand would have sufficed to really instruct the public, instead of there being the present confusion of words, obscuring intelligence, and utterly hampering the Orientalist, who would expound his Philosophy in English. Whereas, in the latter language, I find but one word to express, perhaps, twenty different ideas, in the Eastern tongues,

especially Sanskrit, there are twenty words or more to render one idea in its various shades of meaning.

 

Indian Metaphysics (Complete text)

 

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