Changes

Silence: the condition of the being when it listens to the Divine. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p27 </ref>

Silence is the absence of all motion of thought or other vibration of activity. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p13 </ref>

The stilling of this current, running, circling, repeating thought-mind is the principal part of that silencing of the thought which is one of the most effective disciplines of Yoga. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/purification-intelligence-and-will#p12</ref>

Silence is always good; but I do not mean by quietness of mind entire silence. I mean a mind free from disturbance and trouble, steady, light and glad so as to be open to the Force that will change the nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p18</ref>

The stillness of the mind means, first, the falling to rest of the habitual thought movements, thought formations, thought currents which agitate this mind-substance. That repose, vacancy of movement, is for many a sufficient mental silence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/philosophical-thought-and-yoga#p21</ref>

It is in silence or quietude that we feel most firmly the Something that is behind the world shown to us by our mind and senses. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/reality-and-the-cosmic-illusion#p24</ref>

== How Silence is Different From ==

Silence is a state in which either there is no movement of the mind or vital or else a great stillness which no surface movement can pierce or alter. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p1,p2,p3,p4,p5,p6,p7,p8,p9</ref>

Silence of the mind, peace or calm in the mind are three things that are very close together and bring each other. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p19</ref>

=== Quietude ===

Quiet is rather negative—it is the absence of disturbance. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p10</ref>

The first step is a quiet mind—silence is a farther step, but quietude must be there, and by a quiet mind I mean a mental consciousness within which sees thoughts arrive to it and move about, but does not itself feel that it is thinking or identify itself with the thoughts or call them its own. Thoughts, mental movements may pass through it as wayfarers appear and pass from elsewhere through a silent country—the quiet mind observes them or does not care to observe them but in either case does not become active or lose its quietude.

Silence is more than quietude; it can be gained by banishing thought altogether from the inner mind keeping it voiceless or quite outside; but more easily it is established by a descent from above—one feels it coming down, entering and occupying, or surrounding the personal consciousness which then tends to merge itself in the vast impersonal silence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p36</ref>

=== Calm ===

Calm is a positive tranquillity which can exist in spite of superficial disturbances. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p11</ref>

It is not necessary [in a calm mind] that there should be no thought. When there is no thought, it is silence. But the mind is said to be calm when thoughts, feelings, etc. may pass through it, but it is not disturbed. It feels that the thoughts are not its own; it observes them perhaps; but it is not perturbed by anything. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p58</ref>

=== Peace ===

Peace is a calm deepened into something that is very positive amounting almost to a tranquil waveless Ananda. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p12</ref>

The silence and peace are themselves part of the higher consciousness—the rest comes in the silence and peace. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p20</ref>

When the mind is silent, there is peace and in peace all things that are divine can come. When there is not the mind, there is the Self which is greater than the mind. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p21</ref>

It is from the Silence that the peace comes; when the peace deepens and deepens, it becomes more and more the Silence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p29</ref>

=== Continence of Speech ===

First condition, know how to keep silent. And not only keep your tongue quiet, but silence your mind, keep the head silent. If you wish to have a true, sincere experience upon which you can build, you must know how to be silent, otherwise you have nothing but what you fabricate yourself, which is equivalent to zero. All that one can say is, "Heavens, what a fashioner my mind is!" (The Mother, 19 March 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/19-march-1951#p34</ref>

Already someone has told me, quite rightly, that while practising this half-silence, or at any rate this continence of speech, one achieves quite naturally the mastery of numerous difficulties in one's character and also one avoids a great many frictions and misunderstandings. This is true. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/impurity#p27</ref>

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 =

Philosophy knows nothing about peace and silence or the inner and outer vital. These things are discovered only by Yoga. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-intellect-and-yoga#p2</ref>

Obviously to live in the silent Brahman, the best way is to live within where one can have the silence and resist all outward pulls. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p57</ref>

But 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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/doubt-and-faith#p1</ref>

== Descent of Peace ==

There are two movements that are necessary—one is the ascent through the increasing of peace and silence to its source above the mind,—that is indicated by the tendency of the consciousness to rise out of the body to the top of the head and above where it is easy to realise the Self in all its stillness and liberation and wideness and to open to the other powers of the Higher Consciousness. The other is the descent of the peace, silence, the spiritual freedom and wideness and the powers of the higher consciousness as they develop into the lower down to the most physical and even the subconscient. To both of these movements there can be a block—a block above due to the mind and lower nature being unhabituated (it is that really and not incapacity) and a block below due to the physical consciousness and its natural slowness to change. Everybody has these blocks but by persistent will, aspiration or abhyāsa they can be overcome. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/ascent-and-descent#p16</ref>

I have said that the most decisive way for the Peace or the Silence to come is by a descent from above. In fact, in reality though not always in appearance, that is how they always come;—not in appearance always, because the sadhak is not always conscious of the process; he feels the peace settling in him or at least manifesting, but he has not been conscious how and whence it came. Yet it is the truth that all that belongs to the higher consciousness comes from above, not only the spiritual peace and silence, but the Light, the Power, the Knowledge, the higher seeing and thought, the Ananda come from above. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-psychic-and-spiritual-realisations#p18</ref>

If your consciousness rises above the head, that means that it goes beyond the ordinary mind to the centre above which receives the higher consciousness or else towards the ascending levels of the higher consciousness itself. The first result is the silence and peace of the Self which is the basis of the higher consciousness; this may afterwards descend into the lower levels, into the very body. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/ascent-and-descent#p9</ref>

The silence in the head and heart and the emptiness are both necessary and desirable. When they are there, the consciousness finds them natural and they give it the sense of lightness and release; that is why the thoughts or speech of the old kind are foreign to it and when they come give fatigue. This silence and emptiness must grow, so that the higher consciousness with its knowledge, light, Ananda, peace can come down in it and progressively replace the old things. They must indeed occupy not only head and heart but the whole body. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/experiences-of-the-self-the-one-and-the-infinite#p25</ref>

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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p75</ref>

== Release of the Spirit ==

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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/experiences-of-the-self-the-one-and-the-infinite#p7</ref>

There is no distinction between the Self and the spirit. The psychic is the soul that develops in the evolution—the spirit is the Self that is not affected by the evolution, it is above it—only it is covered or concealed by the activity of mind, vital and body. The removal of this covering is the release of the spirit—and it is removed when there is a full and wide spiritual silence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-psychic-being#p18</ref>

But for the knowledge of the Self it is necessary to have the power of a complete intellectual passivity, the power of dismissing all thought, the power of the mind to think not at all which the Gita in one passage enjoins. This is a hard saying for the occidental mind to which thought is the highest thing and which will be apt to mistake the power of the mind not to think, its complete silence for the incapacity of thought. But this power of silence is a capacity and not an incapacity, a power and not a weakness. It is a profound and pregnant stillness. Only when the mind is thus entirely still, like clear, motionless and level water, in a perfect purity and peace of the whole being and the soul transcends thought, can the Self which exceeds and originates all activities and becomings, the Silence from which all words are born, the Absolute of which all relativities are partial reflections manifest itself in the pure essence of our being. In a complete silence only is the Silence heard; in a pure peace only is its Being revealed. Therefore to us the name of That is the Silence and the Peace. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-purified-understanding#p18 </ref>

== Identification with the Divine ==

It is in the silence of complete identification with the Divine that true understanding is obtained. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p24</ref>

None can say to the Divine, "I have known Thee", and yet all carry Him in themselves, and in the silence of their soul can hear the echo of the Divine's voice. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/relationship-with-the-divine#p6</ref>

There is another phenomenon which is considered spiritual, but which is spiritual only indirectly: it is when you find yourself near someone who has controlled his thought and achieved mental silence. You suddenly feel this silence coming down into yourself and something which was impossible for you half an hour earlier suddenly becomes a reality. This is a rather unusual phenomenon. (The Mother, 22 January 1951) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/22-january-1951#p16</ref>

= Few Helpful Activities and Qualities =