INTRODUCTION

EFFECTIVE speaking is an art. Voice-production, the rhythmic coordination of breathing, control of the larynx and the vocal cords and pronunciation, is a subject which needs as much study as mathematics, or as much discipline as any branch of art-expression.

The cities of the world are full of would-be teachers of elocution and of ineffective voice-trainers. But today, whether it be in the church or on the stage or on the political platform, there are few indeed who have well-modulated, effective or pleasing speech.

Page-1

One might engage the most astute advocate of law to plead a case, but unless his arguments arc accompanied by an effective delivery of speech which carries conviction they will have little or no persuasive value in winning the case.

It is a well-known complaint in universities that many lecturers have an ineffective delivery of speech, and this is the rule rather than the exception. One even comes across cases of perverse pride in professors with a diffident voice. One hears, "Oh yes, he's quite brilliant but no one can understand a word he says." It was once asked of a Cambridge professor what steps were taken in cases of persistent complaints of indifferent speech of lecturers-, he replied that in such cases the lecturer was asked to undertake a subject attracting fewer students.

So it seems that the answer to bad delivery in speaking is to change the audience, not the lecturer.

Speech-training is a necessary part of education, but often one only finds out how very necessary it is when one comes to need an effective delivery in adult circumstances of society.

Ruskin says, " Education does not mean teaching people to know what they did not know, it means teaching them to behave. In other words it means reaching up to those higher potentials of our faculties rather than remaining in the purely

Page-2

animal or physical condition of our birth. The one all important faculty which man possesses and which sets him above the animal is the Power of Speech.

The range of this power is unknown to the masses of humanity—that is why the masses can be so hypnotised by effective speech—this is so because the esoteric knowledge of this power is almost lost, forgotten in the antiquity of a bygone age; and because the average man has become so used to accepting speech as his natural right, he has forgotten the enormous power and privilege it affords him. There is perhaps another reason for indifferent speech germane to our intentions and that is that today most people who are sufficiently educated prefer to put their thoughts into writing rather than trust to the uncertain venture of public speech. It has become a habit of our age to write rather than to speak. To write is the intellectual medium of self-expression peculiar to the thinker and the scientist rather than the poet and the sage. Yet even poetry today is read and understood with the mind alone rather than listened to and apprehended with the heart. The modern poet is a singer in the mind and of the mind rather than the minstrel of heart and soul.

If, however, the intellectual age, the age of science, has led us away from the old habit of speech appreciation as a lost art of cultural excellence it has done very necessary service for the power of speech, it has purified the communication

Page-3

of ideas and clarified expression. Transcending the narrow limits of a parochial life, it has served as a catharsis to purge the over-refined pseudo-speech of an aristocracy which was no longer aristocratic and which had lost the spirit of sincerity from its utterances.

We are on the threshold of a new age—the Age of Fulfilment—when man's progress in science and philosophy must culminate in a synthesis of Knowledge both inner and outer. An age when the masses will partake of a wider enlightenment needing more and more teachers of quality and imagination who will not only know their subject but who will have to be better equipped and better trained to impart it to the millions clamouring for truth and self-expression. We are going through a World-Change, a re-organisation of life and life's values, where a disciplined mastery of the voice in speech with coordinated thought control will prove a powerful attribute of the first importance. It will give one the effective power to influence, handle and control the new complexities which will most certainly be the demand in thought and action of the modern life of the future.

Man wants the best out of life, and the wisdom of the ages states clearly that he only gets it in proportion to what he puts into it. If one has nothing to offer life—or the gods—then one can expect only the bare animal necessities.

Page-4

Man gives according to his attributes and his assets and the one asset which is almost universally overlooked, is the Power of Speech.

The Power of Speech is perhaps the most definite of the powers man possesses; and although its control and correct method of use was often kept in the hands of the "few", the ancients well knew the great importance of this power in the hands of one who knew how to use it effectively.

The rationale of the Indian use of Mantra is when the word, expressing the idea, is surcharged with the dynamism of spiritual truth-force, which would invoke from the auditor such an expression as: " He speaks as one having authority*', which was said of Christ.

This power was used and developed by the Vedic Rishis of ancient India when the Kavi of those times was not only a poet but also a Seer, a Sage, and a Realised Being.

Sri Aurobindo says of the Mantra:

" The mantra, poetic expression of the deepest spiritual reality, is only possible when three highest intensities of poetic speech meet and become indissolubly one, a highest intensity of rhythmic movement, a highest intensity of verbal form and thought-substance and style, and a highest intensity of the soul's vision of truth."

Page-5

Today, in modern intellectual and enlightened man, the intensities of thought-substance are often there but what is usually lacking (we will not mention the soul's vision of truth) is the verbal form and the natural rhythmic movement in speech; an asset which man can always have or acquire, and which is indeed his birthright as a human being.

To lay a sound foundation of Speech Training and to be of real help to the good speaker it is necessary to clear the air of the all-too-prevalent misunderstanding which obtains between the teaching of elocution to high school students and introducing the art of effective speaking to adults, the difference between elocution of the recitation type and serious speech training, the basic principles of which go to the root of clear speaking and effective voice production. Such difference there is as the mimic utterance of school children, to the authoritative expression of the inspired rhythms of the poet.

Page-6