Secret Power of Words

    The scriptures say something very interesting about this: "Faith cometh by the word, and the word by hearing." Perhaps because faith was lost by the word, it must some­how be returned through the word. Those who rule this world are powerful manipulators of the human condition. Their power depends on your reacting to their words. They would be powerless if you failed to react to them. It is your own resentment, your pathetic struggle against their words, that feeds their power.
     To free yourself from this involvement, the first thing you must, do is realize what the problem is. Until you do, you cannot be saved. Discover now how to separate your consciousness from language.
     Have you ever experienced saying a word, and as you repeated it, it began to sound like a strange, unintelligible noise? Let's take any word, like "potato." If you close your eyes and stand back from saying the word "potato," soon it will sound like a silly noise. As you become separated from the earthly association, the word is' seen to be what it is­just noise. As you stand back from language, you will feel stupid, as though you know nothing at all-you will have given up involvement with knowledge (words) and discovered the first humbling truth-that you don't know anything, and that nothing you can ever learn by rote is worth anything. Quite often you will feel dumb and stupid because, in truth, your whole sense of worth has been derived from being involved with the deceitful spirit of language. Your sense of who you are is bound up in words. You think in words, you speak in words, you make decisions through words, and that "conscience" talks back to you in words-the false conscience,

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