1.
That’s a funny idea, that talking doesn’t matter. Matter is that hard stuff like the floor there. Well, things that you say do matter, at the most basic possible level. MNC20
2.
That’s a nice thing that the General Semanticists got into. They called it the semantic reaction, and it’s about how, when you speak to someone, you can speak words to them that won’t change them much, or you can speak words to them that will change them a great deal. It has to do with the amount of energy and the amount of information that are in the words, as well as the condition of the listener. MNC20
3.
Purely conceptual questions can decide energy questions at the level of your brain. When somebody says something to you, you get some noises in your ear that are push-pull mechanical vibrations happening in the air — and they come up and rattle your eardrum a little bit, and it rattles some bones, and the bones rattle this other thing that’s shaped like a snail, which has little filaments on it in graduated degrees of length, like a harp. And the harp vibrates in tune with the incoming sounds from about 16 cycles a second to about 20,000 cycles a second. That little harp is a very magical thing, because it transmutes the energy from mechanical energy into electrical energy, and the electrical energy then goes to your brain. Understand that nothing’s been translated yet. This is still noise happening — pure noise. Then it goes to your brain as a coded electrical signal. It still has to be sorted and decoded by a piece of your brain that takes that noise — a spoken word, for instance — and compares it with all of the other times that word has been heard. And the mind scans for meaning.
Then the mind sees what happened when that word was said after checking through the memory file of that word, and finds out what the word means. All the connections that are going on in that sort system are electrochemical.
Then we know what the word means. If the word happens to have been something with a heavy emotional load for you, like, You’re busted! — Wham! a little electrical discharge happens in your brain, sends another electrical discharge down into your body, and then your stomach starts getting tight, and your muscles start getting tight.
After that, you get verbal and say, “Oh my God, I’m busted. What’s going to happen now? What’ll my mother say? What’ll my lawyer say? What’ll my dealer say?” And you run through a tremendous amount of electrical energy discharging itself and charging around in your head according to the content of the thing that was said to you. That’s a semantic reaction — the word actually changes material things in your head. And the way you have to balance your head to accept the word changes you. MNC20–21
4.
Funny things can happen with words. Words are very, very heavy magic. MNC21