Future Language - Reply

<body stylesrc="../../technical/backgroundforotherauthors.htm" background="../../technical/paperwords.jpg" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#0000FF" vlink="#000080" alink="#800080"> <p align="center"><font size="5" color="#008000">Salvia Divinorum Scotland ~ Experience ~ Future Language </font></p> <hr> <p align="center"><font size="4" color="#008000">Language and Intent ~ further thoughts from further experience</font></p> <blockquote> <p>...The language and intent puzzle continues. It's extraordinary how you have to conceptualize everything you think in order to deal with it. To me language is a mystery because I always think of it as a very recent invention in evolutionary terms, something superficial and artificial, and up to now other psychedelic substances have supported that view. Real life takes place without language.</p> <p>It always puzzles me how they can say that one half of the brain is primarily devoted to language (admittedly to other things too, but they always pick out language as if that were its prime function). Because if so what was that half of the brain doing through all the millions of years when we didn't have language, and what is it doing in animals that still don't have language?</p> <p>But sometimes you get the feeling that language is very fundamental indeed, and on Salvia you sometimes get the crazy notion that words <i>precede</i> the things they describe! But it isn't words as such - that would be absurd - rather the words are a cloak for "concepts". It's the concepts that have this spooky fundamental quality, though even that is a bizarre enough idea.</p> <p>This is where "intent" comes in. The heads on my first trip pointed out that it's not words themselves they understand but the intent which the words cloak. It's quite clear to me now that they were borrowing the concept of "intent" from its meaning in Castaneda and not from what it means in the dictionary (after all, they don't speak English!)</p> <p>The concept of "intent" in Castaneda is radically different from the everyday use of the word. Castaneda's "intent" is a power which actually brings about the intended result. Whereas we all know that simply intending something in the ordinary way doesn't bring it about.</p> <p>I suspect that the reason I have to formulate thoughts that I'm already thinking perfectly well, into precise concepts, as if I had to explain them to some moron, is because I have to align these thoughts with "intent" if I want them to become effective actions rather than just thoughts - e.g. to actually heal the pancreas rather than just wish it were healed. This requires careful and deliberate formulation almost as if preparing a legal document. It is perhaps comparable to the old days when the bard could pronounce a curse or blessing simply by the declamation of a skillfully-wrought poem.</p> <p>It's all very weird.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="../../experience/futurelanguage/reply02more02.html">What I make of this</a></p> <hr> <table border="0" width="100%"> <tr> <td width="8%"> <p align="left"><a href="../../experience/futurelanguage/reply02_end.html"><Back</a></td> <td width="12%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../experience/futurelanguage/index_end.html">Language</a></td> <td width="18%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../experience.html">Experience Menu</a></td> <td width="13%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../home.html">Main Menu</a></td> <td width="14%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../salvia.html">Salvia Menu</a></td> <td width="25%"> <p align="center"><a href="../../salvia/effects.html">Salvia Effects</a> / <a href="../../salvia/effects/feedback/index.html">Feedback</a></td> <td width="10%"> <p align="right"><a href="../../contact.html" title="contact details and links to information on salvia prices and availability">Contact</a></td> </tr> </table> </body>