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== 2. Benefits of practising Mental Silence ==

<div style="color:#000000;">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. When it is agitated, thought becomes confused and impotent; in an attentive tranquillity, the light can manifest itself and open up new horizons to man's capacity.</div>

<div style="color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mental-education#p22</ref></div>

<div style="color:#000000;">I am going to give you two examples to make you understand what true spontaneity is. One—you all know about it undoubtedly—is of the time Sri Aurobindo began writing the Arya, in 1914. It was neither a mental knowledge nor even a mental creation which he transcribed: he silenced his mind and sat at the typewriter, and from above, from the higher planes, all that had to be written came down, all ready, and he had only to move his fingers on the typewriter and it was transcribed. It was in this state of mental silence which allows the knowledge—and even the expression—from above to pass through that he wrote the whole Arya, with its sixty-four printed pages a month. This is why, besides, he could do it, for if it had been a mental work of construction it would have been quite impossible.</div>

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/23-june-1929#p21</ref>

<div style="color:#000000;">This kind of revelation can only occur in a silent mind—at least in a mind that is at rest, completely quiet and still, otherwise they do not come. Or if they come, you do not notice them, because of all the noise you are making. And of course, they help this quiet, this silence, this receptivity to become better and better established.</div>

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-77-78#p20</ref><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"></span>

<div style="color:#000000;">To hear it one should make oneself as silent and passive as possible. And if, in the mental silence, a part of the being can take the attitude of the witness who observes without reacting or participating, then one can take account of the effect which the music produces on the feelings and emotions; and if it produces a state of deep calm and of semi-trance, then that is quite good.</div>

<div style="color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p81</ref></div>

<div style="color:#000000;">The only cure for insomnia is to get rid of the need for sleep by knowing how to obtain mental silence at will. When you can obtain silence at will, you must put your body into a position of absolute repose, stretched out comfortably on the bed; then you go within yourself until there is perfect mental silence and enter a state that is something like a very deep sleep. </div>