“The word airplane does not apply simply to winged flying vehicles that I have had personal experience of. It refers to the Wright brothers’ first biplane and the Japanese dive bombers that attacked Pearl Harbor. I have never seen these. It refers to thousands upon thousands of propeller-driven planes, jet airliners, supersonic interceptors, and the odd top-secret experimental aircraft. I have not seen most of these either.

Every example on earth of a winged flying vehicle, in the past, present and in the future, is called airplane, or an equivalent name in other languages Flugzeug in German, bimän in Bengali, and so on. Each person on earth who is acquainted with modern civilization knows instantly what the word airplane means, and can match it with any example he or she may come to know. Yet each person on earth has had a direct experience of only a small percentage of all airplanes. So the claim that a person on the pratyakña level can only understand a word in terms of experience does not match up to our easy familiarity with the word airplane. Our pratyaksavädé might then transform into an anumäna-vädé.

Actually, the word ‘airplane’ evokes a concept, a ‘universal’ that includes all examples of winged flying machines. When we hear the word ‘airplane’, we refer to that concept. That is why we understand the word. But this just makes it more complicated. Before we had a word and innumerable examples. Now we have a word, innumerable examples, and a concept. Why should a word, which is just a certain noise in the air or mark on a page, evoke a concept in our minds? What, indeed, is a concept? Why does the concept airplane include all examples? Why does the word airplane fit any or all innumerable examples of the concept? These puzzling questions just lead us to the conclusion that there is an occult power behind words that our perceptions and thoughts fail to grasp.

Perhaps it is simpler to ask, Where is the location of the meaning of the word ‘airplane’? It is clear that it is not merely located in our experience. Nor does it sit on some reference shelf in the back of our minds, if that’s what a concept is supposed to be. I do not need to check some mental dictionary every time I hear the word airplane. Without the slightest mental effort, I know what an airplane is. The meaning transcends time and space, even the duality of truth and falsity. An airplane in the sky means the same whether it refers to the flight of an airplane here and now, or a flight ten years ago, or a future flight, or a flight that is merely being imagined. It means the same even if the speaker is lying about an airplane in the sky that isn’t there. Why do we hundreds and hundreds of millions of people instantly recognize the meaning of airplane in all these different cases?

Now, by saying, a Vaikuëöha airplane in the spiritual sky, the word airplane does not suddenly lose meaning. The meaning is as clear as it would be about any airplane outside of our experience. Perhaps a few details have to be explained. This particular airplane, the Vaikuëöha variety, is beyond ordinary perception, since it is eternal and made of pure consciousness. Another airplane, the first one flown by the Wrights, is also beyond ordinary perception, since it is now destroyed; it was made of wood and fabric that now we cannot see. In both cases, the word airplane conveys meaning. In neither case do we perceive why the word airplane conveys meaning. The logic of, We have no experience of a Vaikuëöha airplane, therefore such a thing can’t be understood, can be applied to hundreds of thousands of other instances of the word airplane for which we have no experience: a Japanese dive bomber, the Spirit of St. Louis, an Air Bhutan passenger plane. But in spite of the sceptic’s logic, we do learn about these airplanes through the medium of words.

We may not have as much faith in the sources of words about Vaikuëöha airplanes as we do in the sources of words about material airplanes. But that does not make us men and women of superior reason. After all, we do not even know the reason why we know what the word airplane means.
Similarly, we know what a form is without knowing why. We know what a self is without knowing why. As with airplane, the word-meanings of form and self are not simply our limited experiences of particular examples of material forms or bodies. Nor are they particular concepts stored in our heads. For instance, nobody thinks of the self as an automobile, unless he is crazy. Yet if a car bumps mine in city traffic, I may spontaneously shout, You hit me! Someone else hearing this statement immediately understands what I mean, even though me and automobile are dissimilar concepts. You hit me transcends both experience (since I am not perceived as an automobile) and concepts (since I don’t fancy myself as an automobile). Yet still it conveys meaning. When our pratyakñavädé argues, I can’t understand what you mean when you say ‘transcendental form’, since I have no present experience of that, we might ask him how he can understand a statement about the human form a hundred years in the future. Any talk of form in the future transcends our present experience of form.

SIR2U wrote:

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