Does anyone have any idea what this might mean?

[Rick]

Well have you come to any conclusions yet?

[Andrew D]

uryat genaktuji

Where is the emphasis in the second word Andrew? Is it on the third syllable?

Thanks, Sean. I should have stated that in the first place. The emphasis in the second word is on the second syllable.

[Sean]

Interesting.

It sounds more like three words to me with that emphasis: uryat genak tuji

It also sounds vaguely hebrew to me. I'll run it past an Israeli friend and see what he thinks...

[Andrew D]

I "hear" the phrase in my head in the same way that I "hear" in my head these words even as I type them.

(I assume that others also "hear" in their heads the words which they type. Or write. Or think. Without language, there is no thought, right?)

I don't know what "If you believe it's real" means, but if it means "If you believe that someone external to you is speaking those words to you," then, no, I do not.

These words are not auditory hallucinations. Believe me. I have had auditory hallucinations, and my experience of these words is not like that.

Do the words have any significance, or convey any feeling or meaning to you?

When you hear the words, what are you feeling or doing?

That is one of the many odd things about it. I am a very introspective person in the relevant sense, but I perceive no coherent relationship between the occurrence of the words in my interior life and anything else that is happening either in my external world or in my internal world.

On the contrary, sometimes the words feel like a negative exclamation, like what one might say after dropping a plate on one's foot. Sometimes they feel as Archimedes must have felt when shouting "Eureka!" Sometimes they are interrogative rather than declarative or exclamatory. Sometimes they are meditative; they bubble up when I am in a contemplative mood.

Of course, they may amount to nothing. Or not.

[Andrew D]

It has some "sound" affinities with Berber perhaps?

Andrew, hearing it in your head as in "you've never actually heard it anywhere else"?

Maybe it is an example of speaking in tongues which some people believe is genuine? I know some pentecostals who'd probably interpret it for you! (Actually I don't know any pentecostals).

Meade

I am not sure whether I should take that as jocular, serious, or a bit of both. (Which is why it has taken me so long to respond to it.)

This may be a way in which my agnosticism leaves me somewhat more open than you.

You don't know any Pentecostals? Do you mean by that that you do not know any people who have or claim to have had glossolalic experiences? I ask because I find that rather odd.

One of my dearest friends -- who is, sad to say, no longer among the living -- was a charismatic (in the religious, not secular, sense) Mennonite. He and his wife were, as far as I know, the only charismatic Mennonites on the planet.

His theology and yours, from what I have gathered, are quite compatible. He was a very open-minded person (which I understand to be rare among Mennonites). His view of the Kingdom of God was that it could not be as small as some suggest, which I take to be your view as well.

Anyway, I asked another friend of mine, a charismatic Anglican bishop, about the words which I hear. He suggested, which is the point of this all-too-long-and-often-diverted posting, that I was perhaps hearing a tongue of angels rather than of men.

[Andrew D]

Crap. That posting should not have ended when it did.

If -- and I mean "If" -- my experience of the phrase is in some way charismatically glossolalic, why would God throw it onto me? God, if there is a God, knows that I am agnostic. What could be the point of dumping on me a phrase whose meaning I do not even begin to understand?

[MajGenl.Meade]

I think "a bit of both" Andrew. I was serious about Berber.

Not to sidetrack more but simply to respond to your questions ("answer" seems too definitive)... my own pastor here (and his wife) apparently pray in tongues occasionally and certainly if someone started babbling nonsense (other than my usual) at church I am sure they would think that it was the Holy Spirit in action. I don't - although I don't rule out the other spirit. What do I make of them then? I think they are ... mistaken ... in this particular regard.

Interesting your comment about the smallness of some conceptions of God. When one or other of my lovely friends (they are) says that X which they experienced last Thursday was a 'miracle', that's what I think of their conception. They seem to have no genuine acceptance of God's sovereignty in all things. Sorry that is a sidetrack.

Your last question applies to believers too, IMO. Why would God toss glossalalia on people who have no idea of meaning in what they are saying? I dismiss 'tongues of angels' being a narrow-minded bigot. Or a person who struggles with the Bible rather than accept wholesale whatever passes for thought in some others. Mind you, has your attention don't it just?

Meade

[owlfrown]

'thela hun ginjeet' is a line from Elephant Song from the album Discipline (King Crimson)

[rubato]

Maybe its gorilla?


yrs,
rubato

("the murders in the Rue Morgue"?)

[rubato]

... What could be the point of dumping on me a phrase whose meaning I do not even begin to understand?

Or more generally, if one MUST believe in superstition how do you tell a divine from a demonic invitation?


yrs,
rubato

[MajGenl.Meade]

Or more generally, if one MUST believe in superstition how do you tell a divine from a demonic invitation? yrs, rubato

A very good question which I alluded to: "I am sure they would think that it was the Holy Spirit in action. I don't - although I don't rule out the other spirit"

'thela hun ginjeet' is a line from Elephant Song from the album Discipline (King Crimson)

It may be similar to 'thela hun ginjeet' which means 'this is a dangerous place' in the criminal 'cant' known as Anag Ramese. This slang or polyglot is used by a little-known rastafarian criminal gang with branches in Kansas City and Notting Hill Gate (London). Source: Prof. A. Belew "Discipline on the Street" (1981)

Well spotted owl! Actually it's the title of a song written by Adrian Belew on the album Discipline, as is Elephant Talk. That's why I made the stunningly devious and amazingly witty jests and puns:

"this is a dangerous place" is a repeated line in the song
Anag Ramese indicates that Thela Hun Ginjeet is an anagram of the original song title (Heat In The Jungle)
Belew related his experience of being threatened by members of a rasta drug gang in Notting Hill Gate
Kansas City (KC) referred to King Crimson
"Discipline on the Street" (1981) was not a book of course but referred to the album Discipline released in 1981

Doncha just love King Crimson?

Regards
Meade

[owlfrown]

Well I was close..

[Sue U]

Interesting.

It sounds more like three words to me with that emphasis: uryat genak tuji

It also sounds vaguely hebrew to me. I'll run it past an Israeli friend and see what he thinks...

Well, I can tell you it isn't Hebrew and probably not Arabic. But I also thought that, if it is in fact any known language, it is perhaps more than two words, perhaps as many as four or five.

Of course, Andrew, these may be just phonemes floating around in your head without any meaning at all, perhaps the linguistic equivalent of the scraps of melody (from no recognized song) that I hear in my head from time to time. Or maybe it's your personal "om."

[alice]

... What could be the point of dumping on me a phrase whose meaning I do not even begin to understand?

Or more generally, if one MUST believe in superstition how do you tell a divine from a demonic invitation?


yrs,
rubato

That's the question I've always wondered.
I asked a person who apparently spoke in tongues ... I was told that they 'know', but it doesn't convince me - how do they 'know'?

[MajGenl.Meade]

One of life's imponderables, Alice. AFAIK a person who "speaks in tongues" does not know what they have said. Then only an "interpreter" can say what it was. Which means the original speaker has no idea if the interpreter is correct and nor does anyone else. The only way to 'know' whether it is from the Spirit or a spirit is to test whatever it is. Tongue-wagglers are notoriously shy of that - in fact they do not test the spirits at all but accept wholesale whatever behaviour they and their friends exhibit. This is usually in the kind of church run by a man (some ladies now) given to getting frequent direct "words" from "the lord". The lord of the flies I fear.

Certain kinds of charismatic Christian persons indulge in all kinds of physical aberrations. Of course, persons involved in some non-Christian religions also exhibit the exact same behaviour, including words, ulullations, falling to the ground and other "manifestations". The charismatic has no difficulty whatever in declaring those to be the work of demonic spirits. Their argument that they "know" theirs is from the HS and not evil is not at all an argument they would themselves accept from a Haitian or Brazilian who argued that their own manifestations were not from the devil but from...god.

Meade

[oldr_n_wsr]

I find it hard to speak without a tongue.

[Andrew D]

One of life's imponderables, Alice. AFAIK a person who "speaks in tongues" does not know what they have said. Then only an "interpreter" can say what it was. Which means the original speaker has no idea if the interpreter is correct and nor does anyone else.

What about speaking in foreign languages? If I were suddenly to start speaking Swahili, I would have no idea what I was saying. But someone fluent in Swahili would. And interpreting what I said would not require divine intervention.

Isn't that what the Bible says happened when the disciples "began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance"? (Acts 2:4.) They (reportedly) did not speak gibberish. On the contrary, each listener "heard them speak in his own language." (Acts 2:6.)

Anyway, although the possibility has been suggested to me, I have no reason to think that I have been having genuinely glossolalic experiences. I cannot begin to fathom why God would inflict such a thing on me; after all, such things are "gifts," right?

And as for demonic inspiration, it seems to me more sensible to blame on the Devil my eczema-plus-who-knows-what skin condition(s). Or my kidney stones. Or my bleeding hemorrhoids.

Maybe the "words" that I hear have some meaning. Which is why I raised the question. Or maybe, as Sue U has suggested, they are "just phonemes floating around in [my] head without any meaning at all".

Thanks to all for helping me think about the matter.

[MajGenl.Meade]

If I were suddenly to start speaking Swahili

That would be interesting but of course the point still stands - you still wouldn't know if the "interpreter" was actually interpreting what you said or just making something up. You wouldn't know if that person even spoke or understood Swahili.

Of course, if they had a matriculation from the College of Swahili; testimony of witnesses to their day-job translating Swahili into English at the UN; proof of birth and education in a Swahili speaking country and so on, you might have reasonable grounds to believe they understood Swahili. But you still wouldn't know if what they translated into English was what you had actually said.

Now imagine that you break into a babble and a random stranger standing next to you says "Why that's Swahili and this is what it means...." And that random stranger goes on to say "It's odd because I don't speak Swahili either but God's just given me the ability to translate what you said". That is what some religious people believe to be the case.

Pentecost remains debatable. Did each disciple speak in different actual earthly languages spoken by some of the hearers? Did they speak one language and each hearer heard it differently? In the latter case, there is the possibility that there was no "speaking in tongues" at all - only a "hearing in tongues". And the possibility that they did speak a non-earthly angelic tongue (gibberish) but each hearer heard their own language.

Of course if I met a person speaking gibberish I would assume it was rubato

Meade

[TPFKA@W]

Back in the old days of college I attended some meetings of a group called The Way. They had the speaking in tongues thing happening. One would blither a bit and then another would "interpret".
Load of crap I say.

[MajGenl.Meade]

and another welcome back

Meade