The Silence of the Word

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/ . the ever-creating Word

RAIMUNDO PANIKKAR

THE SILENCE OF

THE WORD:

Non-dualistic Polarities

Present-day ecumenism and gatherings like this run the risk of becomingsuperficial. The first commonplace, perhaps, is to assume that there isalready a common place. All ways may lead to Rome, but this statemententails two conditions: that we march on those ways, without stoppingshort of the end—i.e., that the ways be really ways—and that we donot jump transversally from one way to another, but follow one particu-lar way with patience and the hope that we shall meet at least at theend of our journey if our ways do not cross earlier.

In other words, we should beware of the danger of shallowness inher-ent in any search for universality.

We have to recognize at the very outset that we do not (yet?) havea universal language. True ecumemism could, perhaps, be defined asa searching for one—certainly not for one tongue or idiom, but forone language as a universe of discourse.

Even in a gathering like this, where we are seriously concerned withspiritual life, I am too much of a Buddhist to assume that languagediscloses reality univocally and that we could use, if not the word, atleast the reality of "God" as a common assumption and starting point.Silence is our first and perhaps our only common ground.

We could not proceed much further—at least while utilizing humanlanguage—unless we assume that language is not the whole of humanreality, that reality is not exhausted in language, and that the humanaccess to reality—and truth—is not only by means of words. Further-more, I would like to show that even language is precisely such becauseit words the silence.

Can I, today, transcend language along with you?Can I proceed along one concrete path—and reach that place—which

is no-where and "where" we all meet?Help me now in this venture, and let us pray:

154 CROSS CURRENTS SUMMER/FALL 1974



A-

Myself listening aloud,You listening in quietness,All trying to hear: s'ruti (that which is heard).

Word out of Silence is the over-all motto of our Symposium—and righdyso, for this is understandable to everybody. Only a word coming outof silence is a real word and says something.

The Word of Silence can also be taken as the summary of mycontribution—and this is appropriate, since I cannot believe that thereis Silence on the one side and Word on the other.

Word of Silence does not mean Word about Silence (objective genitive),but the Silence that is in every Word (subjective). It does not meanthe silent word, but the silence's word, the silence that is in every word,the word made of silence.

Let me word that silence: the silence of the word.We can certainly speak about silence as we can speak about what hap-

pened to me yesterday, or about x, or any subject-matter. But the silenceabout which we speak is not a real silence, for silence is not an object(about which you can think, speak). We cannot speak about real silence,

just as we cannot search for darkness with a torch in our hands. Silencecannot be spoken of without being destroyed, since it is incompatiblewith speech.

We can speak around silence—circumscribing silence, i.e., we can speakabout that which is around silence, but which silence is not. We candescribe the neighbors of silence, and point out what leads to, comesfrom, and surrounds silence—just as we can surmise that darkness sur-

RAIMUNDO PANIKKAR 155



rounds us when ou r flickering lam p does not illumine the entire horizon

of our sight.

Bu t we can do more: we can speak silence—letting silence bu rs t into

wo rd , allowing it to explode into speech, simply and really speaking.

Any real word is word because it comes ou t of silence; but it is more;

it is precisely authentic word because it is (spoken) silence. And the

Silence was made Word—and began to Speak!

The word is the sacrifice of silence. The self immolation of silence

brings ab ou t th e word. Silence no longer exists when t he word appears—

bu t the word is there, and carries all that silence can express; the word

is all that silence is—but silence is then no more; there is only word.

Bu t we mortals cannot speak that Word. Who can be the Word of

Silence? Vac, "the Word is the Firstborn of Truth," says the Indian Rev-

elation.1 Through the Word everything has been produced; vac was

at the side of Go d, repe ats a Brahmana: "All thi s, in the begi nnin g,

was only th e Lo rd of th e universe. His Wo rd was with hi m. Th is word

was his second. H e co nt em pl at ed . He said, Ί will deliver this Word

so that sh e will prod uce and brin g into being all this world.' "2

Vac is Brah man , echoes an Upanishad.3 It is th e first offspring of

th e absolute.4 It is nityä väc, the "eternal word," according to a famous

mantra of the Rg Veda.5 Or, in the inimitable language of the Atharva

Veda:

That Sacred Word which was first born in the EastThe Seer has revealed from the shining horizon.

He disclosed its varied aspects, high and low.

The womb of both the Existent and Non-existent.6

Väc is truly "the womb of the universe".7 For "by that Word of

his, by that Soul, he created all this (universe), whatever there is."8

Nobody can say that the Word is not held in the highest esteem:

The Word is infinite, immense, beyond all this.

All the gods, the celestial spirits, men and animals

Live in the Word. In the Word men find their support.9

The sacrifice of the vedic Prajäpati, the total immolation of the trini-

tarian Father, is the explosion of silence producing the three worlds,uttering the Logos.10

In our age, still dominated by the myth of science, one hear s constantly

the methodological advice (to students, executives, and people who want

to succeed, or have to in order to survive): "Whatever you want to say,

say it," followed by the second part of this golden rule: "and as clearly

and briefly as possible." The latter phrase betrays a shallow, utilitarian

(and, I would add, colonialistic) attitude toward time, which is here con-

sidered as something you can manipulate, something you can shorten




and lengthen at your will. Apparently one can "say it," and even "brief-

ly," independently of its content. People do not—yet—affirm that you

can make a plant grow quicker by pulling the leaves, but many assume

that you can train a young student to say in few words even things

that need more words and more time to be said. Time is considered

to be a factor intrinsic to the (temporal) thing, something you can short-

en or lengthen without changing the "thing" said. In other words, it

is possible to reduce time, just as we can simplify mathematical equa-

tions.

This advice presupposes, further, that all things can be expressed

clearly. Because truth is supposed to be clear, the human mind is also

expected to be clear, and obscurity is taken to be "black," bad, untrue.

The Cartesian dogma of "clarity and distinction" is here patent and

is, I suggest, also the white man's bias.

Are we so sure that we are the lords of time and the masters of

intelligibility that we should be allowed to formulate such a methodologi-

cal rule? Are time and words only instruments which we can use accord-

ing to our will? We should keep in mind that most human traditions,

not excluding the sruti and the Bible, say that God loves obscurity.

But I would like to linger a little more on the first part of the advice:

"Say whatever you want to say." We may consider here two assumptions:

a) that you can say everything that you want to say, and

b) that you can say everything, i.e. that everything can be said.a): One phrase that we often and unconsciously use in a wide range

of situations is, "I mean to say ..." To which one could retort, "Then

say it!" But the fact is that we feel it is necessary to intercalate in our

discourse: "Do you know what I mean?" and "I mean to say. . ." because,

ultimately, we cannot say what we mean and I have to know what you

mean in spite of the fact that you have not said it. You only meant

to say it.

There is a constitutive gap between meaning and saying. You have

to jump from the meaning to the saying and I have to jump back from

your saying to the meaning if the saying is really to be a saying of

something—i.e., conveying something which will dawn upon me as hav-

ing a meaning also for me.

A word conceals as much as it reveals. Even more, it reveals onlyin so far as it conceals, and it is only making you aware that it conceals

something in how it reveals what it "says."

You cannot say all that you mean. You can only say what you are

capable of saying. You can only trans-late (in space: trans, and in time:

fate)11

what you mean. You can clothe the meaning in words, but

this clothing is all that you can say, for a wordless meaning cannot be

said.

On the other hand, you cannot mean all that you say. You mean

only a part of what you say. You mean much more and much less than




what you say. And you cannot control this plus or minus by yourself.

It has to be the other, the partner in dialogue, who tells you what you

really have said.

The word is never a monologue; the saying is only such if it says

it to someone. What you say has meaning only within a context, but

you cannot control your context, much less the context of your listeners,

who will inscribe the text of what you say in their context and under-

stand you according to their forms of apperception. What you say is

not (or no longer) your private property.

It is certainly not as if there were a wordless meaning that you after-

wards translate. To speak is not just to translate, but to express, and

the expression—the pressing it outside yourself—belongs to the thing

you express. There are no wordless meanings. This is why they cannot

be said. I am coming to the point: Someone who keeps silent when

she has many things to say is either a hypocrite or has a repressive

nature on the fringe of pathology. Silence is not a technique, nor

another device, nor the repression of the word.

The word is symbol of what there is—and here we come already to

our second point.

b): Not everything can be said: No "thing" can be said. Only that

which can be said, can be said. But this can does not depend upon

your will. What you want to say is already a lie, an inauthentic word.

The word you want to speak is not the real word. The real word issimply spoken. It speaks. And woe if you do not speak it out!

The real word does not break the silence, does not trans-late the

silence, either. The word is not an instrument or a technique. There

is no-thing beyond or behind the word. The silence out of which the

word comes and which it manifests is not another "thing," another "be-

ing," which then, because already in some way thinkable, expressible,

would be in its turn the manifestation of a still more primordial being

et sic in infinitum. The word is the very silence in word, made word.

It is the symbol of Silence. In the beginning was the Word and the

Word was at the beginning—but there is no beginning when there is

no word. The "Unbeginning" has no word. The word is coextensive

with being: Non-being has no word, it is "unword," it does not word.

Let us pause a moment to listen in this connection to an astonishingMayan creation hymn:

Then he descended

While the heavens rubbed against the earth.

They moved among the four lights,

Among the four layers of the stars.

The world was not lighted;

There was neither day nor night nor moon.

Then they perceived that the world was being created.

Then creation dawned upon the world.12




If we want to speak of Being and Non-being, then we have to realize

that Being and Non-being are neither opposite nor contradictory. These

two words are not reducible to the abstract formula "A and Non-A,"

because the Non of the Non-being is not the negation of being as non-A

is the negation of A. If all Being is on the side of Being, even negation

is on that side, so that the "negation" implied in Non-being is not a

negation (which already belongs to Being).

If the Word is the organ of Being and Non-being cannot be conceived

as a negation of Being (which is a contradiction in terms if the negation

has to be real, i.e. carrying being with it), if Non-being is an unword,

if Being and its expression are coextensive, is there any way out of

this manifest aporia}

It is here that any dualistic scheme appears insufficient and a trinitar-

ian approach seems imperative. Now the real trinitarian approach is

ineffable and non-dialectical (otherwise we would have subordination

of the Spirit to the Logos). Perhaps a cultural digression may provide

some illumination.

We are dealing with one of the basic assumptions of mankind, one

of the few alternatives man has chosen, or been chosen to follow: the

way of the Logos or the way of the Spirit.

There is a significant passage in the Satapatha Brahmana. It describes

the struggle about the primacy of vac or that of manas. The former

rests on the ultimate value of the image, the formulation, the expression,the word. The latter assumes the ultimate value of the inspiration, the

experience, the thrust.

8. Now a dispute once took place between the Spirit (manas)and the Logos (väc) as to which was the better of the two. BothSpirit and Logos said: Ί am excellent!'

9. Spirit said, 'Surely I am better than thou for thou dost notspeak anything that is not understood by me; and since thou artonly an imitator of what is done by me and a follower in my wake,I am surely better than thou!

10. Logos said, 'Surely I am better than thou for what thouknowest I make known, I communicate.'

IL They went to appeal to Prajapati for his decision. He,Prajapati, decided in favor of the Spirit, saying (to Logos), 'Spirit

is indeed better than thou, for thou art an imitator of its deedsand a follower in its wake; and inferior, surely, is he who imitateshis better's deeds and follows in his wake/

12. Then Logos (vac) being thus gainsaid was dismayed andmiscarried. She, Logos, then said to Prajapati, 'May I never be thyoblation bearer, I whom thou has^ gainsaid!' Hence whatever atthe sacrifice is performed for Prajapati, it is performed in a low

voice; for Logos would not act as oblation bearer for Prajapati.13

This text could represent the inherent polarity of the IndoEuropeancivilization and the emphasis put by the "West" on the Word and by

the "East" on the Spirit. For, undoubtedly, the Logos has become stronger




in the West and the Spirit has been considered better in the East—

allowing for the oversimplification of such a stat emen t. Cen turi es of his-

torical experience corroborate that the Word without the Spirit is cer-

tainly powerful but barr en, and that the Spirit without the Word is

certainly insightful b ut impot ent . T h e possibility of an aut hen tic an d

ba lanced tr in it ar ia n ap pr oac h is a subject for an other oc ca sion.14

We may now offer a translat io n an d br ie f co mm ent ar y (c on ce rn ing

our subject only) rendering a basic intuition of the Indian tradition as

formulated in the Brhadaranyaha Upanishad.15

1. In the beg inni ng this was the self alone, in the form of a Man.Looking around, he saw nothing whatever except himself. H esaid in the beginning: Ί am.' So, even, today, when a man isaddressed, he says in the beginning 'it is Γ and then adds anyother name he may have. Furthermore, since before the worldcame to be he had burned up all evils, he is called a 'man'.

T h e text invites us to look in and out until both visions merge into

on e reality encompassing subject and object, i.e. until the 'i am' coalesces

with the Ί AM' at the price—obviously—of bu rni ng up th e individualis-

tic ego.

A Ma n: purusa; person, the primordial Man, the theand ric principle,

as in RV X:90.

We ha ve here one of the mos t powerful accounts of th e r ise of human

self consciousness: the birth of reflection. Th e I is bot h the aham, unique wi th ou t a sec on d, an d also the I still to be libe ra ted, which in spite

of everything has also no other name than Ί .' I am: aham asmi. This

is one of the highest revelations of reality and should not be hypostasized

upon a 'He .' Th at is to say that Ί am Γ is not changeable with 'He

is Γ or Ί am He,' the first being only a mental projection and the second

sheer blasphemy. Cf. Kaus U I: 6, for the right place of the He: "What

you are th at am I" (vas Warn asi so'ham asmi).

T h e Sanskrit pun is untranslatable: parva, before; and us, to burn,

give pur usa, the Man.

2. He was afraid; so, even today, on e who is all alon e is afraid .He thought to himself: 'Since nothing exists except me, of whatam I afraid?' The re up on his fear vanished, for of what shouldhe have be en afraid? It is of a second th at fear arises.

You ar e alon e only wh en you discover th at you are alon e. Th is discov-

ery is the beginning of finite consciousness. You discover your limits

an d feel alone.

But only thinking it out can help once consciousness of solitude has

arisen.

Real anxiety is only fear of fear and thus dread of utter nothingness.

Our own image is frightening when it reflects its hollowness (Cf. CU

V i l i : 7, 1 sq.) A proces s of "cons cientis ation" can rid us of dr ea d,




for confidence in the power of the mind tells us that, if there is nothing

to frighten us, we have no reason to be fearful.

3. He found no joy; so, even today, one who is all alone findsno joy. He yearned for a second. He became as large as a manana a woman locked in close embrace. This self he split intotwo; hence arose husband and wife. Therefore, as Yajnavalkyaused to observe: 'Oneself is like half of a split pea.' That iswhy this void is filled by woman. He was united with her andthence were born human beings.

Again a play with words: the Self split (pat-) into husband (pati) andwife (patñi). The ardhanârisvara character of man is here symbolized.

Man is androgynous as an anthropological reality. The desire for a second

is only cathartic when it is a holistic movement toward integration, i.e.,

when it is not concupiscence but love.

Joy is here the criterion of reality as joy is the fullness of being.

4. And she then bethought herself: 'How now does he copulatewith me after he has produced me just from himself? Come,let me hide himself.' She became a cow. He became a bull.With her he did indeed copulate. Then cattle were born. Shebecame a mare, he a stallion. She became a female ass, he amale ass; with her he copulated, of a truth. Thence were bornsolid-hoofed animals. She became a she-goat, he a he-goat; she

a ewe, he a ram. With her he did verily copulate. Therefromwere born goats and sheep. Thus, indeed, he created all, what-ever pairs there are, even down to the ants.

The theme of divine incest as the only possible way to redeem creation

is here expressed by way of describing that all creatures need a second

intervention, a descent of God in order to reach their destination, to

continue creation (be fertile) and bring the universe to its fulfillment.16

Cf. the biblical theme of Yahweh and Israel and the Christian dogma

of the Incarnation.

5. He realized: Ί indeed am this creation, for I produced all this'—for he had become the creation.

And he who has this knowledge becomes (a creator) in thatsame creation.

To "become the creator" does not necessarily mean to be so substan-

tially but to create along with him, i.e. to be, in the functional sense,

creator, i.e. creating—because such a man really creates. No mystic

would deny this experience, whatever wording one may use in order

to describe it.

7. Verily, at that time the world was undifferentiated. It becamedifferentiated just by name and form, as the saying is: 'He has




such a name, such a form.' Even today this word is differen-tiated just by name and form, as the saying is:'He has such a name, such a form.'

He entered in here, even to the fingernailtips, as a razor wo uld be hidden in a razorcase, or fire in a fireholder. Himthey see not, for (as seen) he is incomplete. When breathing,he becomes breath (prana) by name; when speaking, voice; whenseeing, the eye; wnen hearing, the ear; when thinking, themind: these are merely the names of his acts. Whoever worshipsone or another of these—he knows not: for he is incomplete

with one or another of these. One should worship with thethought that he is just one's self (atman), for therein all these

become one. That same thing, namely, this self, is the trace(padaniva) of this All, for by it one knows this All. Just as, verily,one might find by a footprint (pada), thus—. He finds fameand praise who knows this.

Ν ama, rüpa, name and form. At variance here with the Greek morphe,

form does not stand for the permanent 'essence' but for the ephemeral

shape or clothing of reality. To consider the form accidental or essential

is, again, one of the fundamental human options.

The question is here not only one of immanence (logically as well

as ontologically) and vice versa, nor can there be a part without the

whole and vice versa. He who discovers this is, by this very fact, com-

plete.

9. Here people say: 'Since men think that by the knowledge ofBrahma tnev become the All, what pray, was it that Brahmaknew whereoy he became the All?'

The question is whether the epistemological order has ontological re-

percussions and again whether consciousness and self-consciousness can

be identical.

10. In the beginning this was only Brahman. That Brahman knewonly himself as Ί am Brahman.' Therefore he became the All.

Whoever among the gods became aware of this also becamethat; thus also among the seers, thus also among men.

Real knowledge cannot mirror reality only: it produces it.

We have the following equations: idam (this) = aham; aham (I) = brah-man; tat (that) = brahman; brahman = (all) sarvam.

16. Now this is the Self, the world of all beings. If a man offersand sacrifices, he will attain the world of the gods. If he recites(the Vedas), he will attain the world of the seers. If he offerslibations to the forefathers and desires offspring, he will attainthe world of the forefathers.

Th e whole universe is linked into a unity by the sacrament of the

word and the sacrifice of action.




Known and investigated: viditam mimamsitam, i.e. known both by

experience or intuition and by reflection.

The polarities we speak about are not independent positions governed

by the dialectical laws of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. They are not

independent, nor even interdependent, but intradependent. They are

not mutually exclusive so that they must be aufgehoben, but mutually

inclusive. They need one another and they cannot be without each other.

They are not parts of a whole, but rather they are the whole in a part,

the whole partially (seen).

The polarities we are speaking about are the character of reality. They

need one another and are only in confrontation with, dialogue with,

and dependence on each other. In point of fact, they are not two (any-

thing) nor are they one. The "one and the many" is the great fallacy

of our mind. It is something which the mind cannot apply to itself.

Man would not be man if there were no woman, and vice versa. God

would be no God if there were no creatures, and vice versa. Goodness

would not be such if evil were not its possibility, and vice versa. Freedom

would be an empty concept if there were not necessity, and vice versa.

Salvation would be meaningless if the opposite possibility were not a

real one.

But this makes sense only if we restrain from substantivizing one of

the poles or considering their relation as secondary and subsidiary totheir (independent) being. An unrelated being, like an unworded word,

is a sheer contradiction.

This means that only a holistic point of view will do justice to reality

and that any analysis is methodologically inadequate for this kind of

apprehension of reality, since the whole is more than just the sum of

its parts (so that the integral of the analyzed parts would never yield

the real).

Coming back to our starting point, we could say that the relationship

between silence and word is a non-dualistic one, and neither monism

nor dualism will do justice to their intra-penetration. Perhaps the conse-

quences of this for spiritual life can be explored together during these

days.

There is an intrinsic and constitutive polarity between silence andword. There is not the one without the other, and it is the one which

makes possible the other. They are neither enemies nor incompatible.

Of course, there are escapist silences and repressed silences, as well as

empty words and nonsensical chattering; it is only such non-authentic

words or silences that are at variance. Any authentic silence is pregnant

with words which will be born at the right time. Any authentic word

is full of silence which gives to the word its life. May our words be

always words of silence and our silence always the virgin womb that

does not speak, just because it has nothing to say.




FOOTNOTES

ΗΓΒ II: 8, 8, 5.2TMB XX: 14, 2.

3BU I: 3, 21.

4Cf. BU IV: 1, 2.

5RV VIII: 75, 6.

6 AV IV: I, 1. The "Sacred Word" is here brahman.7 AB II : 38.8SB X: 6, 5, 5. Cf. BU I: 2, 5.

9TB II: 8, 8, 4.

10

Cf. my book, El silencio del Dios, Madrid (Guadiana), 1970, which will exonerateus from further quotations.u With apologies to semantics.12

Cf. J. Bierhorst, In the Trial of the Wind, American Indian Poems and Ritual Orations.New York (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 1971, p. 3.

13SB I: 4, 5, 812.

14Cf. R. Panikkar, The Trinity and World Religions: IconPersonMystery. Madras (The

Christian Literature Society), 1970; (Darton, Longman and Todd), London, 1973; (Orbis),Maryknoll, N.Y., 1974.

1 5

I: 4, lsq. Paragraphs 1,2,3,10,16 are my own translation. The others are fromHume's Standard Version.

16Cf. my study, 'T he Myth of Incest as Symbol for Redemption in Vedic India,"

in Contributions to the Theme of the StudyConference held at Jerusalem, July 14 19,1968. Jerusa-lem, Hebrew University. Edited by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky and C. Jouco Bleeker, Leiden,E. J. Brill (1970), pp. 130143.

Discussion

Dr. Alan Watts: Th is was one of the

most interesting lectures I have ever

heard. One thing it brought out was

the fact that to practice real interior

silence you do not have to stop words.

Great Buddhist scholars I have known

would me di ta te whi le they we re do in g

their scholarly work; the two things are

no t mutua lly exclusive. It's sort of

counterpoint to what Brother David

was j us t say ing, th at you can't me di ta teif you can't meditate in a boiler fac-

tory.

Swami Venkatesananda: Tha t brings

us on to the yogi's view of the Word.

It's more Tantra than even Yoga:

wh er e th ey tr ac e th e Wo rd to its som e-

thing beyond the root para. Before the

Wo rd got its bo dy , the re was an in-

termediary stage which is madhyama;

be yo nd th at is th e pasyanti, the vision,

and we are left with the silence again.

I'm not trying to either contradict or

fragment this spirit body on en es s, th e

silence wo rd com mun ion , but it is

good to realize that there are these

stages. For instance, even in our body

we may have th e same pr ob le m. We

have some organs called vital organs,

then the non vi tal or ga ns , then the

mass of flesh made of bread and but-ter, and then the skin (more butter

an d brea d). You see, we do differen-

tiate one from t he other. It's just like

saying my body is covered by skin,

though the skin is part of the body.

I think it is very important for us to

remember we can reach out to the sil-

ence, which is pregnant with the

Wo rd. Bu t th e Wo rd di dn 't come out;




in fact an d truth it is a reincarnation

of th e silence.

Also, for those of us who practice

what is called meditation (and don't

ask me to define that, please) it may

be an excellent idea to use what Dr.

Panikkar very beautifully explained

this morning: What is this? Paper.

Ho w do I know it is paper? Where did

this word "paper" get formed? It's an

object, subject, something, nothing—Idon't know. (Rubs a piece of paper be-

tween fingers.) Ah , that's right—even

before that I know: it's not that; it's

not even this. It is not the experience

of a child, but the experience of en-

lightenment. Childlike, but enligh-

tened. When I look at something, cer-

tainly there a re some vibrations, some-

thing enters—enters what? I don't

know. But where does it formulate it-

self, where does it get the body? This

might be one of the most effective

ways of entering th e inner silence—as

they often phra se it—in order to medi-tate upon it. And that is the beautiful

mantra from th e Upanishads that Pro-

fessor Panikkar quoted in part: yato va-

co nivartante aprapya manasa saha.

The Upanishads are a bit dangerous

to quote, for the simple reason that for

the most part they a re dialogues where

the master and his student sat facing

each other and the whole thing was

born then, and the context is terribly

important. The one was afraid, and

then came th e answer to this fear. But

how does one who is alone shake off

fear? I am alone; how do I shake offthat fear? Anandam brahmano vidvan na

hibhetu kadacana. When on e goes into

that interior oneness, there is this bliss

of Brahman—it is the bliss of what is

beyond the self, beyond this personal

self, the mask, th e veil, beyond the

personal self—maybe there your mind ,

your description of the word, gains ad-

mission.

Pir Vilayat: Dr. Panikkar, it seems

to me that th e paranoia from which

most of us who are called upon to talk

suffer, is probably because we feel that

we are betraying by the word that

which should be committed to silence,

since the words deal with created

things. When we say "silence," I think

we mean the silence of all created

things, a plane or level of conscious-

ness where thoughts have subsided al-

together. We are all trying to speakfrom that level, and it seems that when

we do try to do this, we find that the

only possible language is silence.

Panikkar: To draw up a response

is almost a contradiction. I think I un-

derstand, and to that extent share,

your opinions. And yet, we may have

symbolized two world-views in a rather

concre te and fascinating way. I

wanted, rightly or wrongly—not to go

a step beyond, because then it would

not be dealing really with the

ultimate—to present silence not as a

language, th e language of silence, butas th e authentic source of every real

word. That's why we ar e in a paradoxi-

cal situation. Silence dawns the mo-

ment we are situated there , at the very

source of being, which is at the same

time th e source of the Word. That's

why Word is Brahman, and why there

are authentic and inauthentic words.

And that's why the lie, untruthfulness,

is perhaps th e capital sin. As the Satha-

patha Brahmana (II: 2,2 , 20) says: sa-

tyam eva upacara, "Worship first of all

is truthfulness." On another level—

sorry, I shouldn't perhaps think oflevels—truth is worship.

I was trying to overcome th e dichot-

omy between silence and word without

falling into monism. I was trying to

overcome the dilemma between monism

which blurs everything and makes dis-

tinctions impossible, eliminating any

tension (I spoke of the constitutive pol-

arity of reality), and the dualism which

splits, without any possible natural




bridge—there can only be artificial

efforts—where the important thing is

to bridge the gap. In fact, there is

another experience, which overcomes

monism and dualism. I do not need

now to call it advaita, or non-dualistic,

but we may try to discover that source

of any word on that ultimate level. By

"word" I understand any expression,

manifestation, icon, revelation, or be-

ing, as precisely what we try to symbol-

ize as silence. But I was also trying to

say that we cannot keep silence and

word in a dialectical form of appre-

hension. It is only by allowing our

word, our manifestation, our life, the

revelation of being which we ourselves

are, spirit and matter, it is only by al-

lowing an authentic flow from that

very source that the silence as source

will dawn upon us.

I should immediately add that the

source of being is not being, but the

source of being—being is already on

this side of the curtain. Entering into

silence is not an escape from the

world, a dichotomy between the ulti-

mate and the relative. It is to discover

that the ultimate is only ultimate be-

cause I am speaking from the relative;

and the relative is only relative because

I discover that there is that relation

which allows me to be silent from the

ultimate point of view. This tension,

which I emphasize here, cannot be

grasped dialectically nor is it of a dia-

lectical nature. Let me call it dialogical

now without having to explain it fur-

ther.

Watts: I think a comment may be

helpful. There's a saying in the Budd-

hist Scriptures that that which is void,

that precisely is form; that which is

form, that precisely is void. It sounds

completely illogical to a Western mode

of thinking, but if you think what you

mean by the word "clarity," you can

see it at once. It's a clear day, let us

say, the sky is quite empty. Clarity also

means "articulate detail," which means

the same thing. Both form and void

are the one word "clear." It's a clear

day; you are clear to me.

Panikkar: And so it's transparent—

invisible. It means "I see through."

Watts: I think you made a most

important point when you distin-

guished non-dualism from monism;

Christian theologians never got this

clear, though they may be beginning

to. For they always confused tat-tvan-

asi, or the Atman is Brahman, with

monism. "Well, if we're all one glob,"

they say, "there can't be any love, be-

cause love implies relationship." But

then what are you going to do with

three persons in one God? If you be-

lieve in the Trinity, you can also

stretch your mind or your imagination

to the position of the Vedanta. Non-

dualism is a funny word, because it's

used instead of oneness; but the oppo-

site of oneness is either none or many.

We need a word that expresses some-

thing which has no opposite, and that

nevertheless doesn't oppose opposi-

tion. Now we can't express three di-

mensions on a two-dimensional sur-

face, but we can employ a convention,

which is a line with a slant to a vanish-

ing point. This is all on a flat surface

and is understood to represent the un-

representable dimension of depth; we

all see it, once we've discovered and

experienced that convention. In ex-

actly this way, all language is dualistic,

for the simple reason that words are

labels on boxes—because you can't

have an inside without an outside, with

the peculiar exception of the Möbius

strip, which is still another dimension.

Since all language is like that, we in-

vent this conventional word advaita,

which is understood by everybody to

represent the dimension beyond,

transcending the opposites; we can't

talk any sense about that in ordinary

language, but we can know what it is.




Professor Berry: One of the prob-

lems that emerges from this, which

perhaps deserves some comment, is

that a person may assume silence is

one, whereas it's many. The key diffi-

culty in the meeting of traditions is

that silence has given rise to many

words. Once we have gotten this far

with relating silence and the Word, we

might inquire how this helps in the re-

conciliation of opposed words.

Panikkar: This is a real problem,

and it would be preposterous to at-

tempt an satisfactory answer now.

Nevertheless, let me say that, for me,

silence is neither one nor many. The

unicity or multiplicity of silence is out-

side the question. You understand

what I mean: I think 'he' is trying to

drag me to that dialectical field, and

I'm trying to defend myself, to keep

myself from entering that field where

'he' is going to beat me. But that's the

greatness and fragility of our enter-

prise. We are not in a polemical discus-

sion. We are trying to explore an in-

sight, and however right 'he' is in the

field of dialectics, that is not my point.

I would say two things: one, silence is

neither one nor many; two, the Word

is one.

If I were to speak now (and I nei-

ther put labels on anybody nor like

people to label me in any way) of

Christian theology, I would say that

for a Christian theologian it would not

make a very great difficulty to say,

"The Word, the Logos, is one." Crea-

tion, speaking in Christian terms, is a

splitting of that Word into thousands

of different voices, melodies, caca-

phonies, etc. God speaks only once, but

we hear it twice: the Logos and the

world; again and again Christian litur-

gy and theology differentiate. And it

is the business of creatures, first of all,

to listen to that rhythm, and to recon-

struct the Word. The Word that comes

out of this reconstruction would be

different (to speak again in categorical

terms) from the Word which was at the

beginning. That's why my comment to

John 1:1 is, "at the end, the Word

shall be." And in this between, this

moment of silence, is an orchestra! In-

deed, 'he' is absolutely right: our

words are still many, too many, here

in this in-between. (That's why I stop

now.)

Watts: According to St. Thomas

Aquinas, it is the silent pause which

gives sweetness to the chant . . .

Nur (S. Durkee): . . . and the ex-

pression in Arabic, fihi-ma-fihi: in it is

what is in it; with also the understand-

ing of: not in it what is in it. In it what

is not in it and not in it what is not

in it. If we need time to discover the

timeless, then we need words to discov-

er the silence. There is no polarity be-

tween these two things, unless one is

caught in the duality of East and West.

It is a question of re-orientation rather

than of trying to understand the ambi-

guity; we must try to perceive that

which gives rise to it in the person.

Sister Patrice O'Connor: We should

entrust ourselves to the dynamism of

whatever is happening. I find a real

key in what you just said: that in the

process the truth can be within me—or

within a person, in whatever proport-

ion it may be—and that process is just

keeping it open.

Nur: Ther e is this thing of allow-

ing "it" to fall into "that," and falling

into that, failing to perceive what it is

that is actually occurring each momentit occurs, which ¿s creation.

Watts: You know, Sâhkara says in

his commentary on the Kena Upani-

shad that the Brahman or the Atman,

which is the knower in all, is never it-

self an object of knowledge. So we can

never put our finger on it. But we

could demonstrate it with mudra, which

is a Sanskrit word for gestures that

people make. I have a Western mudra




which demonstrates it perfectly. All

children know the beginning of it [de-

monstrates with his two hands]:

Here's the church and here's thesteeple.

Open the door and there are thepeople.

Now here's the parson going up-stairs.

And her e he is saying his prayers:Catch-'im, catch-'im, catch-'im,

catch-'im, catch-'im . . .

(When the right thumb is grasped by

the left hand, the right hand pulls

away suddenly to grasp its own

thumb—in vain.)

That's the history of religion.

Panikkar: An d also the religi on of

history—otherwise we don't feel the

need to catch them.

I have some written questions, and

a warning that my answers should be

short! One question (I shall take them

as they have been given to me, without

any discrimination): Q.: "Is it not self-

contradictory to speak about silence atsuch length?" Yes, it is. I have tried

to let silence speak, and I made a triple

distinction for those who are inte rested

in distinctions, of speaking about si-

lence, speaking around silence, and

speaking silence. Only the third and

latter is what I have tried to do all the

time. The authentic word is not a

cancer, an excretion of some con-

cocted material on the mental level,

but the expression of real, lived ex-

perience, which has been fed by read-

ings and visits and failures and

prayers, and kneeling down and goingout and being in all kinds of moods; it

is an unveiling of that mystery which

reveals and conceals at the same time

in the Word—under standing by Word

not only Sabda-Brahman* but mainly

vac, not only the sound, the articu-

lated language, but any type of expres-

*Sabda, pure sound, the Word identifiedwith the Supreme Brahman. Ed.)

sion, revelation. To speak about silence

is indeed a contradiction.

Dr. J. Bruce Long: Th e root ques-

tion, is: Why can we not let silence

speak for itself?

Panikkar: We can. And to me tha t

is the only real word. The rest is lies,

banalities. Th e rest is just noise.

Watts: It should be poin ted out

that Dr. Panikkar was silence spe aking

for itself.

Nur: Thi s is what I was trying to

understand before: the questioning

that exists between silence and what is

being said. Now I understand that it

is all silence and that it is all being

said, not in any way unclearly—what

is before you, is it. There is nothing

else; this is it. This discrimination

shows the need for re-orientation, for

if there is not a re-orientation here, we

are left with endless discrimination be-

tween : is it silence, or is it word? Th er e

is nothing else that it is. This is it.

Panikkar: That' s the reason why I

allowed myself to change the general

tide from "Word out of Silence" into

the "Silence of the Word."

Pir Vilayat: I'm thinking of a story

of a murshid of my father (murshid

means guru). My fat her , who was a

very scholarly person, was initiated by

a dervish in Hyderabad who was really

unable to express himself in words. My

father was absolutely full of questions

and found it very frustrating to come

to his teacher and ask for an explana-

tion of these things and not get a satis-

factory explanation. One day, as my

father was repeating the zikkha, which

is a practice of the Sufis at night time,

the teacher came in the room and said,

"I am the answer to your question."

And at the moment, he was the an-

swer.

Panikkar: Anot her question here

reads, "My occidental 'Latin' difficulty:

How can I keep silence without words

filling it?" My first quick answer is:




don't! Don't keep such a silence! An

elaboration of that could only be what

I tried to say before, that any artificial

effort at keeping silence remains bar-

ren, and shouldn't be made. The pro-

cess, the ontogenesis I have tried to de-

scribe, culminates precisely in the mo-

ment: by entering into the Word, not

denying or repressing the Word, I may

discover the source out of which the

Word speaks. Then I will find that

perhaps ninety percent of my words

are absolutely unnecessary; after which

I may enter into a silence which will

make a powerful thing of any of my

words, and all the rest will simply fall

into silence. But we cannot keep sil-

ence without words filling it. The

Western Latin difficulty is quite in

order, because it is not a question of

keeping silence, it's a question of dis-

covering the Silence of the Word.

A third question: "What is the

relationship of Word and Silence to

detachment?" If it is a Jewish-

Christian-Islamic background out of

which this question appears, I would

give one answer; if Hindu, a second

one; if Buddhist, a third; and sophisti-

cated as I fortunately or unfortunately

am, if it comes from a secular back-

ground, I would elaborate a fourth

type of answer. But let me assume it

comes from a Jewish-Christian-Islamic

background. All these three great Se-

mitic religions, if you allow me this

word, belong to the same family, and

my immediate reaction is this: Non-

attachment is that which prevents idol-

atry. Any type of idolatry, and the

three main religions are fully in agree-

ment, is the fundamental sin. The mo-

ment that I lose non-attachment both

from any word and from this peculiar

sui generis generalization between

words and silence, I become an idola-

ter, because I freeze the meaning of

the word, I freeze my conception, my

icon, my expression, my word, and this

becomes a lethal relationship.

I will refrain from quoting the Bha-

gavad Gita (111:19) but must remind

you that asakta means un-attachment

or non-attachment, not detachment,

which is wrong because it is inhuman.

Detachment: I'm not concerned, you

can go to the dogs—I don't care. This

is not what the Gita counsels when it

speaks of asakta.

Were I to speak from the Buddhist

point of view, I would just quote a

Chinese Buddhist (I have gone to the

sources time and again, and the first

traceable source is a Chinese successor

of the sixth Grand Patriarch who has

uttered, in my opinion, one of the

greatest possible religious utterances):

"If you happen to see the Buddha, kill

him. " Thi s is becau se the idea, the

image, or the perception of Uve saviour

is the greatest obstacle to realization at

the moment that you really meet him.

Watts: "It is expe dient for you tha t

I go away for if I go not away . . ."

Panikkar: Anot her question: "We

do not possess a universal language,

yet whence arises the need for such—

does that mean that we must die to

Christ in order to be really Christian?"

We do not possess a universal lan-

guage, certainly. "Whence arises the

need for such?" I can only say that this

need arises when you feel such a need,

not before. Let me quote a Father of

the Church, Evagrius Ponticus:

"Blessed are those who have reached

infinite ignorance." The need for uni-

versal language only arises for those

who feel that they do not yet speak a

universal language. When you come to

a man who is simple—we call them

illiterate—and he speaks to you so

clearly in his language and cannot un-

derstand how you do not understand

him, he is speaking a universal lan-

guage. Not îoryou, unfortunately, and

that's why you need a translator, a be-

trayer of all that he wants to say, and




unfortunately in our Western civiliza-

tion we have scores of such first-class

blunderers.

Let me give one example: fortuna-

tely or unfortunately, most of the

learned books scholars write on the

polytheistic attitude of Africans and

some of the Indian sampradayas are not

read by the people about whom schol-

ars speak. Yet these academicians most

commonly write without realizing that

hardly anybody steeped in that so-called polytheistic world imagined or

said what they imagine. Th ese bookish

observers, for example, consider the

African's concrete act of worship as

polytheistic because they see it only

from the outside and fail to grasp that

for him it is unique in each act. He

speaks a universal language of which

we don't have the key. We have lost

the sense of that total attitude in which

that very mode is exhausted in the ex-

istential act of worshipping that con-

crete form (idol, icon—call it what you

like), and he doesn't have the kind ofcritical distance by which one can re-

peat that act—and thereby make it in-

authentic.

To use a Christian vocabulary, to

feel the need for universal language is

part of the sinful human condition.

Had I to speak as a Hindu, it belongs

to the reconstruction of the body of

Prajapati. But once the need arises, I

cannot bypass the question and pre-

tend that I am speaking a universal

language.

Then I become very aware of my

own limitations, and the other ques-

tion immediately arises, "Does that

mean that we must die to Christ in

order to be really Christian?" It is a

dear friend who has written that to

me , and he will not take it amiss if I

say that on this level I do not see the

need to be Christian. But as I think

I understand him, when he under-

scores the really Christian, I would say:

yes, provided this is done as a real dy-

ing to Christ—in real death and to

Christ. The moment that you die with

the second-hand knowledge that you're

going to rise again, that is not a

death—you are already manipulating

your Christian tradition. "Eli, eli lama

sabbactani" is not the cry of a come-

dian who already has so much faith in

his God that it could save him. And so

you encounter the risk of not rising

again, and that's the real death. All therest is dialectical juggling. So the ans-

wer is, yes, but not in order to be a real

Christian. Die to Christ, yes, because

have you not discovered that it is the

only way to live?

Now comes another question which

is not a question, but a whole mandala,

followed by a question. The mandala

speaks of the Father in interrogation:

Neither being nor non-being, silence,

'en Arche; arrow to the icon-logos, to

the smaller icon-myself, to the rest by

a penchoresis, by a circumincessio, by a

total cosmic movement which the au-

thor, also a friend of mine, calls the

dance. It is a very good mandafa which

I can only try to incorporate, and

which I myself have drawn several

times. "The question oitheosis, the div-

inization of man of which you speak—

is it in the realm of icon, of being? Or

is it in the silence, neither being nor

non-being?"

May I assume that the question is

clear? Let me give an answer which by

its imperfection may qualify the ques-

tion. It is in the realm of icon, in the

realm of being; it is not in the realm

of the Fathe r. "You shall be gods," and

Scripture cannot be put aside and min-

imized. "And he who eats me, etc., will

be one with me." The divinization is to

be one with the Icon, with the Logos:

God of gods, light of lights, but the

scar of our temporality remains even

in the timeless. We shall become, using

the Semitic tradition, God. God does




not become God—/ have become God.

That is religious, because such dyna-

mism is real. Incidentally, as you

know, in the whole Vedic tradition

maya doesn't mean illusion; it means

precisely the power of the säkti, of the

whole dynamism of the world. So that

the theosis is in the realm of the icon,

in the realm of the Word, in the realm

of the Son. That's why the Trinity is

more than just a small mental devicefor distinguishing Christians from

Muslims and Jews.

Second question: "The homo-ousian

quality of all things, especially of Word

with Silence, seems to imply a complex

paradox of this circumincessio of

being/non-being plus neither being

nor non-being." In capital letters:

PLEASE EXPLAIN."

Ex-plain: un-fold. Explain can come

from explanare or from explicare.

Explicare—is not to make it plain,

banal. Let us not reduce the complexi-

ty of reality to a few nice slogans, butunfold it. But I can only unfold if at

the same time I try to keep both ends

together in order to fold it again, nice-

ly, so that it may be presented as a

gift again, in full respect to you.

Otherwise I will destroy the whole

thing for my intellectual curiosity and

then the explanation is making it plain

and is simply destroying the mystery.

"The homo-ousian quality of all things

implies the complex paradox of this

circumincessio of being/non-being plus

neither being nor non-being." Yes, with

the qualification that non-being is nota negative being, that with non-being

we cannot manipulate, that non-being

is not a kind of mathematical zero

which helps in calculations with the

mathematical infinite, that non-being

is not another type of being on the neg-

ative side; that non-being is not the

limit of being, as if being were limited

by non-being; that non-being, on the

level of which we are speaking, does

not enter into the dialectical process of

being/non-being so that you can play

with being on the one side and non-

being on the other; that this non-being

is that Silence and that the relationship

between being and non-being is not a

dialectical relationship of opposition,

but of origination. The Father begets

the Son—who is a real-begotten from

the non-being, if you want to make

this equation. So they are not on thesame level. The circumincessio (and here

I am uttering something which may be

debatable to people who see tradition

only as guarding the past, not trying

to discover that tradition is to take and

to pass on, thus looking towards the

future)—is not well represented by a

circle, for it is not going back to the

origins, it is a new creation. The spiral

may perhaps be more appropriate—

but the spiral on three-dimensional

levels where the point is still being

created by the very fact that you go

another circle—so the paradox is thiscircumincessio in its spiral mode between

being and non-being, not that one just

goes back to the origins.

We do not go back to the origins.

We take the origins with us in order

to proceed ahead, and this is the mo-

ment I discover that this pilgrimage is

filled with them, that I cannot be sat-

isfied by repeating words, or by just

going back to the silence, but I am en-

tering into that dance in which silence

and non-silence, being and non-being,

are a part in a way of which I am only

aware once I have done it —and com-mitted the mistakes—not before.

Meanwhile, I am just an ecstatic wave,

maybe full of myself, and emptying

myself with the dance. And others are

going to give me a hand and tell me,

"Brother, come here." And by this

effort—both my committing the mis-

take and the others who excuse me—

the dance proceeds. Any other possible

procedure is inconsistent here.




^ s

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The Silence of the Word

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