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→Not only Continence of Speech
To remain in silence as much as possible is good for a time. But entire retirement is seldom found to be helpful—the lower movements may remain quiescent owing to want of stimulus from outside, but do not disappear. For that you must be able to get an inner quietude and a mastery over the outer movements which will resist any atmosphere. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p74</ref>
== Inner Silence ==
It is really an inner silence that is needed—a something silent within that looks at outer talk and action but feels it as something superficial, not as itself and is quite indifferent and untouched by it. It can bring forces to support speech and action or it can stop them by withdrawal or it can let them go on and observe without being involved or moved. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p76</ref>
To make yourself blank in meditation creates an inner silence; it does not mean that you have become nothing or have become a dead and inert mass. Making yourself an empty vessel, you invite that which shall fill it. It means that you release the stress of your inner consciousness towards realisation. The nature of the consciousness and the degree of its stress determine the forces that you bring into play and whether they shall help and fulfil or fail or even harm and hinder. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/23-june-1929#p21</ref>
This condition you had of the inner being and its silence, separated from the surface consciousness and its little restless workings, is the first liberation, the liberation of Purusha from Prakriti, and it is the fundamental experience. The day when you can keep it, you can know that the Yogic consciousness has been founded in you. This time it has increased in intensity, but it must also increase in duration. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p82></ref>
The condition you describe shows precisely the growth of this inner silence. It has to fix itself eventually as the basis of all spiritual experience and activity. It does not matter if one does not know what is going on within behind the silence. For there are two conditions in the Yoga, one in which all is silent and there is no thought, feeling or movement even though one is acting outwardly as others do—another in which a new consciousness becomes active bringing knowledge, joy, love and other spiritual feelings and inner activities, but yet at the same time there is a fundamental silence or quietude. Both are necessary in the development of the inner being. The absolutely silent state, which is one of lightness, voidness and release, prepares the other and supports it when it comes.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p25</ref>
Remain very quiet, open your mind and your heart to Sri Aurobindo's influence and mine, withdraw deep into an inner silence (which may be had in all circumstances), call me from the depths of this silence and you will see me standing there in the centre of your being. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/letters-to-a-young-sadhak-iii#p12</ref>
All experiences come in the silence but they do not come all pell-mell in a crowd at the beginning. The inner silence and peace have first to be established. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p79</ref>
In silence, the consciousness grows. It aspires to know You more and more perfectly. (The Mother, 3 April 1972) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/3-april-1972#p1</ref>
= Silence and Yoga =