Silence Summary

Read more about Silence from the works of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

Silence

In silence lies the greatest receptivity. And in an immobile silence the vastest action is done.

What is Silence?

Silence is the absence of all motion of thought or other vibration of activity.

Quietness of mind doesn't mean entire silence. It means a mind free from disturbance and trouble, steady, light and glad so as to be open to the Force that will change the nature.

Silence of the mind, peace or calm in the mind are three things that are very close together and bring each other.

Why Silence?

Silence is the ideal condition for progress.

If the calm and silence are perfectly established in the physical, then if inertia comes it is itself something quiet and unaggressive, not bringing such disturbances. But to get rid of inertia altogether a strong dynamic calm is needed.

When one has learned to silence the mind at will and to concentrate it in receptive silence, then there will be no problem that cannot be solved, no mental difficulty whose solution cannot be found.

In order to allow at all to the higher Light an adequate entry and force of working, it is necessary to acquire a power for quietude of the nature, to compose, tranquillise, impress a controlled passivity or even an entire silence on mind and heart, life and body.

How to Practice Silence?

There is an active method by which one looks to see where the thoughts come from and finds they come not from oneself, but from outside the head as it were; if one can detect them coming, then, before they enter, they have to be thrown away altogether. This is perhaps the most difficult way and not all can do it, but if it can be done it is the shortest and most powerful road to silence.

The peace and silence must settle deep in, so deep that whatever comes from outside can only pass over the surface without troubling the settled calm within—it is good also that the meditation comes of itself. It means that the Yoga-Force is beginning to take up the sadhana.

When one find yourself near someone who has controlled his thought and achieved mental silence. One suddenly feels this silence coming down into oneself and something which was impossible half an hour earlier suddenly becomes a reality.

Silence in Yoga

Yoga is not a mental field, the consciousness which has to be established is not a mental, logical or debating consciousness—it is even laid down by Yoga that unless and until the mind is stilled, including the intellectual or logical mind, and opens itself in quietude or silence to a higher and deeper consciousness, vision and knowledge, sadhana cannot reach its goal.

Descents of peace are good, but an increasingly stable quietude and silence of the mind is something more valuable. When that is there then other things can come—usually one at a time, light or strength and force or knowledge or ananda.

What one feels first [in the silence] is the pure existence of the self, without any idea, characteristic or movement—existence pure and simple, Sat Brahman—or else one feels that and a vast peace and wideness. Afterwards other things are felt such as Ananda, but always with this as the basis.

In the perfect silence of the contemplation all widens to infinity, and in the perfect peace of that silence the Divine appears in the resplendent glory of His light.

Every kind of realisation—infinite self, cosmic consciousness, the Mother's Presence, Light, Force, Ananda, Knowledge, Sachchidananda realisation, the different layers of consciousness up to the Supermind—all these can come in the silence which remains but ceases to be blank.

Content curated by Sameer Guglani

Read more about Silence from the works of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.