Originally Posted by kerry

The language/sound producing part of the brain in most of our lives is closely connected to the meaningful production of sounds. In other words, we utter sounds that communicate in a social context. Only rarely do we utter meaningless sounds. This is quite a constrictive process whereby the social necessity of shared meaning impinges upon individual freedom of sound production.
Thinking is closely connected to these meaningful sounds resulting in the fact that thoughts and words become indistinguishable. The private use of glossalalia disconnects meaningful words and sounds resulting in a thoughtless mind.
The best way I know to illustrate this is insomnia. If I can't sleep because my mind is racing, thinking about a million things, I can speak in tongues and the thoughts disappear resulting in almost immediate sleep. So I think that speaking in tongues is a kind of shortcut to the kind of experience that mystics seek in meditation. It's a Pentecostal Nirvana. Part of the reason why I think both traditional Nirvana and Pentecostal Nirvana is appealing is that it frees the individual from the influence of others, producing a religious liberation of sorts. This liberation can only occur in two possible ways. Either it involves no words or sounds at all (the Zen experience) or it involves words and sounds that mean nothing to anyone(the Pentecostal experience). In either instance the 'individual' is freed from society.