Let’s review for a moment where we have got to.We’re
proceeding here on a couple of assumptions.
Assumption:
The authors of the ancient texts were exploring areas of potential and experience which we
have since ignored, with our attention directed toward technology and the external world.
One assumes that they were as clever as we, and that they made valid and far-reaching
discoveries in their explorations of the internal world. (I’m thinking of people like
Lao-Tze, Buddha, Patanjali, books like the Tao Te Ching, the Dhammapada, the
Yoga Sutras, the Talmud, the Psalmists, Sufi texts, and so on.)
Assumption:
Apparently, when we first began developing and using language, is it not reasonable to
assume that our verbalization was slow and clumsy? But is it not also reasonable to assume
that with practice the speed of language use would increase steadily? Is it thus not
likely that we are now speaking and—especially—thinking much faster that did our
forebears some thousands of years ago?
Possibility:
Is it thus not possible that at least some of the discoveries made by the authors of the
oldest inner-world texts, were made using a speed of verbalization (both spoken and
thought) considerably slower than that of our own speech and thought?
