Answered Questions IX - Without words

I wanted to use for this post the example of the many ways that the Eskimos have to refer to snow, but it seems that it would not be true. Still, I think it is right to say that people use to have greater wealth of words for what they are most familiar with. For example, there will be far fewer words for sea conditions in those countries without coast line, and even fewer words for pork products in countries with Muslim tradition.

This brings us to the wonderful world of metaphor. If it appears that we have never had a sophisticated sense of taste (perhaps because our history is characterized mainly by the great famines), when we go to value the infinite nuances of a wine aroma, we have to use terms such as "notes", "velvet" "almond", "honey," "moss" and many more, although the wine does not have an inch of them. This is how we communicate on the new or the unknown: by analogy.

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This beautiful system is good in some cases and bad in others. While it makes the act of communication more lucid and inspiring it can also create confusion and inaccuracies. Till what extent I wonder?

I remember a television talk show a few years ago, with the brave and noble aim of addressing the issue of God and the spiritual experience. A nice group of preeminent minds, writers and thinkers had been gathered. The topic was somewhat away from the traditional dogma of the Catholic Church, but dealt with more intimate and esoteric paths. The unfortunate thing was that while striving to be understood, the pundits were not able to find the words to describe something so far from the more everyday experience of most viewers. Trying to describe the paths of spirituality, they ended up talking in terms that seemed to make little sense altogether. It was almost funny to hear those wise men babbling with such force.

A different case would probably be if, as in many of the peoples of Asia, transcendental and spiritual experience was something more mainstream, more routine and applied in our tradition. Is it the lack of adequate words what makes us difficult to get this spiritual experience, or it is a consequence of our doing so profane?