What is likely to happen if I begin to tire of word-knowledge – to become fed up with the inherited labels and terms that limn and lame such “knowledge”? I have invested so much, over the years, in these feeble little varmints—these word-coins! But unlike metal coins, they breed like rabbits or maggots, taking over the territory, stinking up the air with their map-crap, clap-trap. At their best, they serve more as diversions from, than as pointers to, the silent truths they feebly grope and poke at. In their normal capacity, they are more a part of the 𝑤𝑎𝑙𝑙 than of the 𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑤.
To be fair, my writing has come from the desire – or was it a need? – to communicate my inner experiences to others who might find such modest offerings useful or helpful. Such intentions seem honorable enough. But what if the chief result of my labors is to attract a limited following, a select readership? Suspecting what I now suspect – or knowing what I know – about the pied piper-ish character of most “interesting” and “alluring” writing, am I not misleading and cheating those sincerely curious readers by offering them mere confections and Kool-Aid when they hunger for 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑓𝑙𝑒𝑠ℎ 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝑠ℎ 𝑏𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑑? As for the rest, who seek only a wee bit of undemanding intellectual titillation or flattering entertainment, what have I to do with them? Nada.
If I am charged with the daunting task of using mind to slay the mind, I must perfect the art of using words to overthrow the usurping power of words. Every verbal act must, at bottom, be a kind of “vanishing act” – or a banishing act – like the stirring stick that is itself consumed by the campfire. I will attempt, from now on, to write with “invisible ink.” If I am not yet strong enough to be silent, the least I can do is stop defiling and diluting the silence with chit-chat-chatter (instead of sat-chit-ananda). May I serve the silence by speaking only in sentences that auto-destruct, that immolate themselves before the altar of silence?