Sara: Now the “wake-up call” for me is that I used the wrong and misleading word.
Sundari: It is interesting to see how unconsciously we use words without being aware of their implied meaning. Vedanta puts us into a whole new world of perception because it is so insistent on the correct and conscious use of words – it teaches through the implied and not usually the ostensible meaning of words. For self-inquiry to work, where the ostensible meaning does not work, we must take the implied meaning, based on logic. For instance, if we say that there is an identity between Isvara and jiva, what do we mean? We can’t work this out with the ostensible meaning of this statement, because Isvara is consciousness plus the world, and jiva is consciousness plus the subtle body. Isvara is omniscient, and jiva only knows its subjective reality. We must take the implied meaning by removing all the non-essential variables to get to what is non-negatable, the fact that both Isvara and jiva are awareness.
Mastering the art of communication is indeed crucial – I have attached the link to a short video James made on this a few years back. It covers the practice of mindfulness and restraint of speech, called vaktapas, or sama and dama, control of thoughts and speech. Assuming we want peace of mind, unless we bring awareness to this our lives in the world will be very difficult because words truly are the source of all misunderstanding between jivas.
~ Love, Sundari