The Personality of the Writer
by Mother’s Service Society
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Writing is a
vast field and comprises of several components.
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Here, I would
like to deal with one of those aspects.
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It is the aspect
where the thought blends itself with the language.
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So far culture
found its origin in religion, religious values and religious ways of life.
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The way of
life - agriculture, trade, etc - has always generated its own culture.
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Language
exclusively belongs to each of these branches of life.
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Great writers
dissolve their personalities in the social life and their writing is instinct
with the culture of that society. When their language blends with the culture
of that society, they become truly great.
·
Great writers
may slightly be different from born writers. My subject is how one can make
oneself a writer.
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It is a
self-training one can give oneself when he knows the nature of thought and the
character of language.
·
In writing a
book of theory, the Theory of Social Evolution, there is an abundant scope of
experimentation with thought and language, as theory is all thought and
concept.
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Mastery of language can be arrived at in several ways. One
of them is to condense the thought to a minimum size as well as expanding it to
the maximum length.
·
Doing it in
both ways, not only the thought is mastered but language has infinite scope to
blend itself with thought.
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To know a
thought clearly is different from expressing it equally clearly.
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The thought
goes into concepts. Language has already gone into linguistic concepts. Both of
them will be in conflict.
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A new thought
demands a new linguistic concept.
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Either the
thought must have that force or the writer should create that capacity in the
language.
·
It can be
achieved by mental exercise or linguistic exercise or by efflux of time when
the intercourse with several audiences can achieve it.
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One such
exercise is the writings on the 32 principles of this Theory.
·
These 32
principles have been explained in 64 pages of writings and have been made
concise into 55 to 60 phrases.
·
The 64 pages
have been condensed into three short summaries of half a page, 3/4 of a page
and 1 1/2 pages.
·
Below these is
one in 86 words. It is actually the 2nd or 3rd draft but the structure is yet
to become grammatically right.
·
The harmony
with grammar, diction, idiom, thought, tone, etc. goes with the tonality,
massiveness, richness, fullness, figurative pithiness, impersonal weight and
poetic universality.
·
During a period
of a few years by exchange with questioners, public audience, writing to
different view points, personal thinking, etc. the language will have to mature
to the power required by the force of thought. Before that, this sample may
undergo 20 or 30 variations.
·
The changes
will broadly fall under two categories.
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One will be
along the direction of diluting expansiveness.
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The other will
be along the lines of conciseness that is dense.
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Theoretically,
it can become ten volumes in one direction and ONE word in another direction.
·
For that to
expand into ten volumes of an encyclopedia explanation, arguments, examples for
each field and its sub-sectors must come in.
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Before it
becomes ONE word like
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The short
version in 86 words and a few others.
1.
Subconscious
collective society in its self-conceptive self-determinism throws up a
conscious leader when it is mature, having changed its old attitudes into new
ones, so that it may move from its physical vital experience to mental
comprehension by its own conscious awakening of discarding its anachronisms. It
organises itself into subtle planes that are powerful because of their subtlety
in its journey through the successive stages of survival, growth, development,
evolution, all of which are stages that conform to the same laws in either
direction.
2.
Social
evolution of physical experience into mental comprehension is by the emergence
of subtle organisation that is most powerful.
3.
Emerging
powerful subtle organisation from experience to comprehension presides over the
social evolution through a conscious pioneering leadership.
4.
The presiding
deity of the emerging organisation presides over the subconscious social
evolution.
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To give
thought to each one of these aspects will enlarge our conception of writing --
reconciling with grammar, idiom, linguistic sense, etc.
·
We can look
for examples of each where it is present and where it is absent and study such
things in the writings we read presently.
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Where we feel
it is absent, we can try to supply it if possible.
·
Where we see
it is present, we can imagine HOW we write it
and compare our own writing with this standard.
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We can examine OUR own writing
with this critical eye and begin to think how it can be replaced.
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Shortening the
length without loss of sense is linguistic efficiency.
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Once we see
this we must try to acquire it in full measure. We may say this is physical
efficiency in writing.
·
The next step
here is to be able to write that way even in the first draft which means we
must be able to write without needing a subsequent correction. Repetition, when
it is right, is physical inefficiency.
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The vital
efficiency here is to economise energy. It means to
avoid being verbose. That is helped by a knowledge of
the appropriate word.
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Mental
efficiency is attained by acquiring diction.
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Further
efficiency comes by the right idiom.
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As long as an error of any description is there, all these
refinements will be alien to us.
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These efforts
when successful will successfully take us away from thought.
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When we have
acquired the above capacity, we will see errors creeping in, in spite of our knowledge
clearly understood. It is because of overwhelming cause such as
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Failure to
have acquired it earlier having become a habit insistently expressing now.
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It may come
from our school, family, community, country.
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Overcoming
such deficiency is to overcome it on behalf of that plane.
·
Consecration
of such a habit, when it becomes a success, is capable of overcoming ALL such defects
as long as consecration is there.
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The easiest
way to acquire it is to study the masters from this view.
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It can give
you the capacity at the level of skill, but it can never become an endowment of
your own.
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Consecration
at this level is able to give us these skills as our own and will take them to
the final level of talent.
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As the
consecration possesses you, you will find your writing falling into this rhythm
by itself. Error is original, infinite
and it can try to reach perfection. Correction of such errors at that stage of
perfection gives perfect perfection.
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To be able to
write an idea of several aspects from each aspect comprehensively may be called
integral capacity of writing.
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As length is
physical, energy is vital, organisation is mental, Silence
-- a capacity to express a thought silently, by NOT expressing it -- is of the higher mind.
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Mind
exercising at all these levels opens the mind to zones of existence not usually
present consciously in the community of writers. Should one see this and avail
of it, he reaches or out reaches the level of masters in the field.
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Thought and
language are only two aspects of writing.
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The whole
world is compressed into anything, here writing.
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Form, force,
rhythm, Truth, Time, Space, Knowledge, sweetness, etc., etc. are all there in
any effort. To be able to extend writing to anyone of these further dimensions
is to become a writer par excellence.
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One can see
this exercise taking us inwardly through all the planes of existence till we reach the Absolute.
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It is obvious
this is NOT an effort in writing.
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By this
fullness of endeavour, our work moves from life to yoga.
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At one such
point, the infinity of scope will be clear. Turning that outward perception
inward, the infinity of inner possibilities waiting to seek expression will be
seen.
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Broadness of
conception, generosity of expressions, wideness of exercise, idealism of
comprehension and all trails of greatness are of help in actualising
this opportunity.
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This is an evolutionary opening. To us it is a yogic
opening.
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We must be
creating energy at the level of infinite abundance and conserve all of it,
every drop of it, for this work, when one seeks it.
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Error is the
easiest way of expending all the energies at that level by committing it and
correcting it.
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To be able to
see this ASPECT of life in the
biography of great men is to benefit by them. Not one of them will possess
these endowments in evolutionary fullness. In them, it will be found in a
fullness of work they have on hard.
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We are, in
fact, far, far away from any such man in real accomplishment.
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We are, in
consciousness, far, far ahead of any of them in real possibility.
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The possibility
can be availed of when we equal them in real accomplishment.
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