They have several meanings which pass only vaguely through our mind and remain largely in our subconsciousness when we hear a word. The inaccuracy and ambiguity of our language is essential for poets who work largely with its subconscious layers and associations. While the ambiguities of language confine the conscious mind to a vague interpretation of reality, those same ambiguities of language are employed by poets and mystics to speak to the subconscious of the listener. Likewise, Ramalingar used even the space between words and images to cleave the rational mind and reach into the deeper recesses of his readers consciousness. His language of mythical and symbolic imagery expands language from word units, with their small arena of conflicting associations, to symbolic units comprising a vaster area of conceptual and emotional meaning.
Mythical language is much less restricted by logic and common sense.
It is full of magic and paradoxical situations rich in suggestive images and never precise, and can convey the way in which mystics experience reality much better than factual language. Ramalingar's brilliant flashes of mythic imagery leave little room for the rational mind to drive in it's wedge of differentiation. One of Ramalingar's images in particular recurs throughout his works. He repeats it as a kind of invocation at the beginning and end of each poem, moreover he refers to it continuously within the body of his compositions. Strange that a single word was enough to awaken the visionary within.