It is much better to eat the meal in silence or at any rate in quietness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/food#p9</ref>
=== Listening ===
We say something that is quite clear, but the way in which it is understood is stupefying! Each sees in it something else than what was intended or even puts into it something that is quite the contrary of its sense. If you want to understand truly and avoid this kind of error, you must go behind the sound and the movement of the words and learn to listen in silence. (The Mother, 12 March 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/12-march-1951#p9</ref>
It is a matter of attention. If you concentrate your attention on what is being said, with the will to understand it correctly, the silence is created spontaneously—it is attention that creates the silence. (The Mother, 12 March 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/12-march-1951#p12</ref>
If you don't do that, you are wasting your time, and, into the bargain, wasting mine. That's a proved fact. I thought I had already told you this several times, but still perhaps I didn't tell you clearly enough. If you come here, come with the intention of listening in silence. What happens you will know later; the effect of this silent attitude you will recognise later; but for the moment, the only thing to do is to be like this (gesture), silent, immobile, attentive, concentrated. (The Mother, 25 July 1956) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/25-july-1956#p14</ref>
All the other senses undergo a similar transformation. All that the ear listens to, reveals the totality of its sound body and sound significance and all the tones of its vibration and reveals also to the single and complete hearing the quality, the rhythmic energy, the soul of the sound and its expression of the one universal spirit. There is the same internality, the going of the sense into the depths of the sound and the finding there of that which informs it and extends it into unity with the harmony of all sound and no less with the harmony of all silence, so that the ear is always listening to the infinite in its heard expression and the voice of its silence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-supramental-sense#p12</ref>
== Receptivity in Silence ==