Ordinary experiences can be expressed easily in conventional language.
The rub lies with the mystic's experience when his consciousness undergoes a change. With heightened consciousness, mystics are known to become 'mauni babas' . That is why it is often said that one who knows, speaks not. If at all he says something, it is unintelligible to the laity. The intensity of their experience and the shift in consciousness is beyond the grasp of language.
In that state takes birth the coinage of words, which require interpretation to help seekers and students decipher their import. We find this interesting linguistic phenomenon in all religions, as a result of which we come across such words as 'lila'.
Aristotle used the word 'phantasmagoria'. Kabir's 'ult bansian' paradoxical utterances steeped in mysticism are apparently paradoxical but actually logical. D T Suzuki says, " The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we use language to communicate an inner experience which in its very nature transcends linguistics." Language is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to describe the experience. There is no formula for correlating mystical experiences with ordinary language, since individualised 'glimpses into reality' are often unique and so beggar description.
When sages try to communicate their knowledge through words, they encounter this difficulty and their statements seem contradictory. So much so that paradoxes are almost synonymous with mysticism. Seers from the Buddha to Nanak in the east and Heraclitus to Don Juan in the west brought to light the insufficiency of language in communicating their mystical experiences.
Language cannot keep pace with the seer's progress in awareness where, as Sri Aurobindo says, "All things in fact begin to change their nature and their appearance; one's whole experience of the world is radically different. There is a new, vast and deep way of experiencing, seeing, knowing, contacting." It obliges the seeker and the student to adopt a "much more subtle holistic and organic" interpretation of the mystic's utterances.
Sages therefore often resorted to the technique of camouflaging deeper truths in simple language, creating mythological devices in progress. The various aspects of Brahmn have been given the name of various gods worshipped by the Hindus. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad unfolds this mythology making it clear that all these gods are but reflections of the one ultimate reality. While people say, Worship this god! Worship that god!, all this is Brahmn, sought to be presented in a way that is easy to understand.
Mystic experiences transcend not only intellectual thinking but also sensory perceptions. The Katha Upanishad says, "What is soundless, not palpable, formless, imperishable, likewise tasteless, constant adoreless, without beginning, without end, higher than the great, stable..." To give expression in words to the glimpse of such reality a seer feels short of words and resorts to riddles, paradoxes, contradictions and mythological devices.
The Buddhists call knowledge which comes from such an experience as "absolute knowledge" because it is not based on classification, abstractions and is not relative and approximate. How can such knowledge be adequately described in words? The Kena Upanishad asks, "There the eye goes not, speech goes not, nor the mind. We know not, we understand not. How would one teach it."
Inaccuracy and ambiguity of language may serve the purpose of poets who deal largely with subconscious layers but it is a different matter for mystics fathoming the layers of consciousness that are entirely different. For seekers and students the difficulty of language is unavoidable but it starts melting when one decides to be actively involved in it. And such involvement is highly rewarding.