Bamboo and the Nepalese, the Inuit and snow, words, and God

***

The Nepalese apparently have seventy-two different words for varieties of bamboo. The Inuit have over fifty words for snow. To the outsider, however, the different nuances of these objects, requiring different words, are hardly, if at all, discernible. It is the intimacy of the people with their surroundings which brings depth and clarity to their vision and understanding. So it is with God. Which is to say- for the uninitiated there is only one word- and rarely that- for God, and that is ...'God'. And even this word is rather vague and inaccurate for the vague and inaccurate mind, and is mostly avoided or stumbled over by the speech of the vulgar. But for the God-person, there are infinite variations of the singular God-substance. In fact, as it happens, the adept comes to see God in everything, and so every word not only applies to the separate 'thing', but also to God. In fact every word is a word for God. In fact every word is God. And not only that- God is every Word.

***

These fragments are taken from unpublished writings by Jack Haas, selected from the notebooks 1990-2005.