Let us learn to be silent so that the Lord may make use of us. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/19-december-1971#p1,p2</ref></centre>
=References=
=Why Stillness must be Practised?=
Equality and the Annihilation of Ego
If we can pass through these two stages of the inner change without being arrested or fixed in either, we are admitted to a greater divine equality which is capable of a spiritual ardour and tranquil passion of delight, a rapturous, all-understanding and all-possessing equality of the perfected soul, an intense and even wideness and fullness of its being embracing all things. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/equality-and-the-annihilation-of-ego#p10</ref>
<center>~</center>
==The Various Benefits of Stillness==
===Benefits to the Physical Being===
Peace and stillness are the great remedy for disease.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/peace-and-quiet-faith-and-surrender#p26</ref>
<center>~</center>
The stillness … in the meditation is a very good sign. It comes usually in that pervading way when there has been sufficient purification to make it possible. On the other side, it is itself the beginning of the laying of the foundations of the higher spiritual consciousness.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/descent-and-the-lower-nature#p11</ref>
<center>~</center>
The power of physical immobility is as important in Hathayoga as the power of mental immobility in the Yoga of knowledge, and for parallel reasons.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p5</ref>
<center>~</center>
...the "Only solution" is to be in a state of inner stillness that does not seek to know or foresee, and to let the Force flow through the instrument; then, automatically, what has to be done is done, what has to be received is received.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/10/september-10-1969#p8</ref>
<center>~</center>
A mind that has achieved this calmness can begin to act, even intensely and powerfully, but it will keep its fundamental stillness—originating nothing from itself but receiving from Above and giving it a mental form without adding anything of its own, calmly, dispassionately, though with the joy of the Truth and the happy power and light of its passage. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/03/july-25-1962#p115</ref>
<center>~</center>
...to receive the supreme Force, what's needed is, on the contrary, the equivalent of stillness—the stillness of sleep, but an ABSOLUTELY CONSCIOUS sleep, absolutely conscious. The body feels the difference.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/10/october-18-1969#p58</ref>
<center>~</center>
The first object of the immobility of the Asana is to get rid of the restlessness imposed on the body and to force it to hold the Pranic energy instead of dissipating and squandering it. And the body is increasingly conscious: it has a very acute perception of the vibrations coming from the old habits, from the old ways of being and from the opposition, and of the presence of the True Vibration. So it's a question of dose and proportion, and when the amount, the sum total of the old vibrations, the old habits, the old responses, is too great, that creates a disorder which takes stillness and concentration.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p8</ref>
<center>~</center>
The body, accustomed to work off superfluous energy by movement, is at first ill able to bear this increase and this retained inner action and betrays it by violent tremblings; afterwards it habituates itself and, when the Asana is conquered, then it finds as much ease in the posture...
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p8</ref>
<center>~</center>
For it is not only able to hold and retain this energy, but to bear its possession of the physical system and its more complete movement through it.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p8</ref>
<center>~</center>
The higher use of Hathayoga depends more intimately on Pranayama.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p10</ref>
<center>~</center>
Pranayama, starting from the physical immobility and self-holding which is secured by Asana, deals more directly with the subtler vital parts, the nervous system. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p10</ref>
<center>~</center>
The life energy, thus occupying and operating in a powerful, unified movement on the tranquil and passive body, freed from the restless balancing between the continent power and the contained, becomes a much greater and more effective force. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p8</ref>
<center>~</center>
... just as the restless active mind seems to seize on and use irregularly and imperfectly whatever spiritual force comes into it, but the tranquilised mind is held, possessed and used by the spiritual force. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p8</ref>
<center>~</center>
...in order to be overcome, and which gives such a clear and intense perception of how precarious the equilibrium and existence are. And then, behind: a Glory. The Glory of the divine Light, the divine Will, the divine Consciousness, the eternal Motive. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/07/june-8-1966#p16</ref>
<center>~</center>
Equally must the sense-mind be stilled and taught to leave the function of thought to the mind that judges and understands. When the understanding in us stands back from the action of the sense-mind and repels its intermiscence, the latter detaches itself from the understanding and can be watched in its separate action.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-purified-understanding#p11</ref>
===Benefits to the Mental Being===
This consciousness we can become aware of when we draw back from the mind and its activities or when these fall silent. But we see first its immobile status, and if we regard only the immobility of the self, we may say of it that it is not only timeless, but actionless, without movement of idea, thought, imagination, memory, will, self-sufficient, self-absorbed and therefore void of all action of the universe.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/memory-self-consciousness-and-the-ignorance#p11</ref>
<center>~</center>
The normal activity of our minds is for the most part a disordered restlessness, full of waste and rapidly tentative expenditure of energy in which only a little is selected for the workings of the self-mastering will...
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/hathayoga#p6</ref>
<center>~</center>
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#p15</ref>
<center>~</center>
...of a still mind, I mean then one in which these subtler disturbances too are no longer there. As they fall quiet one can feel an increasing stillness which is not the lesser quietude of repose and also a resultant clearness as palpable as the stillness and clearness of a physical atmosphere. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/philosophical-thought-and-yoga#p17</ref>
<center>~</center>
We may feel imperfectly by the emotional mind, we may have a sense by the sense-mind or a conception and perception by the intelligent mind of the Spirit present in Matter and all its forms, the divine Delight present in all emotion and sensation, the divine Force behind all life-activities; but the lower will still keep its own nature and limit and divide in its action and modify in its character the influence from above. Even when that influence assumes its highest, widest, intensest power, it will be irregular and disorderly in activity and perfectly realised only in calm and stillness…<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/oneness#p6</ref>
==Consequences if not Practiced ==
It then reveals itself as a constantly swirling and eddying undercurrent of habitual concepts, associations, perceptions, desires without any real sequence, order or principle of light. It is a constant repetition in a circle unintelligent and unfruitful. Ordinarily the human understanding accepts this undercurrent and tries to reduce it to a partial order and sequence; but by so doing it becomes itself subject to it and partakes of that disorder, restlessness, unintelligent subjection to habit and blind purposeless repetition which makes the ordinary human reason a misleading, limited and even frivolous and futile instrument
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-purified-understanding#p11</ref>
=How Best can one Practice Stillness?=