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=
=How Best can one Practice Stillness?=
You must be absolutely without any reaction, like this (gesture of immobile offering Upward, palms open). And then, when you are like that ("you," meaning the cells), after a while the perception comes of the category the movement belongs to, and you just have to follow the perception, whether it is that something must disappear and be replaced by something else (which one doesn't know yet), or whether it is that something must be transformed. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/06/march-24-1965#p38</ref>
==What are the Prerequisites for Practising Stillness?==
...one thing perhaps needs to be kept in view—that this pure stillness of the mind is indeed always the required condition, the desideratum, but for bringing it about there are more ways than one.
It is a concentration of energy of consciousness that sustains, while it lasts, all creation, all action and kinesis; but it is also a concentration of power of consciousness that supports inwardly or informs all status, even the most immobile passivity, even an infinite stillness or an eternal silence.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-origin-of-the-ignorance#p7</ref>
<center>~</center>
There is nothing to be done with this fickle, restless, violent and disturbing factor but to get rid of it whether by detaching it and then reducing it to stillness or by giving a concentration and singleness to the thought by which it will of itself reject this alien and confusing element.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-purified-understanding#p11</ref>
First, you must become conscious of the receiving of energies, their passing into your being and their expenditure. Next, you must have a sort of higher instinct which tells you whence the most favourable energies come; then you put yourself in contact with them through thought, through stillness or any other process—there are many.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/23-december-1950#p4</ref>
<center>~</center>
You must know what energy you want, whence it comes, of what it is composed. Later comes the control of the energy received. Ninety per cent of men do not absorb enough energy or they take in too much and do not assimilate what they take—as soon as they have had a sufficient dose they immediately throw it out by becoming restless, talking, shouting, You must know how to keep within you the received energy and concentrate it fully on the desired activity and not on anything else.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/23-december-1950#p4</ref>
<center>~</center>
...the two things can go together, you see, there is a moment when the two—aspiration and passivity—can be not only alternate but simultaneous. You can be at once in the state of aspiration, of willing, which calls down something—exactly the will to open oneself and receive, and the aspiration which calls down the force you want to receive—and at the same time be in that state of complete inner stillness which allows full penetration, for it is in this immobility that one can be penetrated, that one becomes permeable by the Force.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/21-april-1954#p26</ref>
<center>~</center>
Well, the two can be simultaneous without the one disturbing the other, or can alternate so closely that they can hardly be distinguished. But one can be like that, like a great flame rising in aspiration, and at the same time as though this flame formed a vase, a large vase, opening and receiving all that comes down.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/21-april-1954#p26</ref>
<center>~</center>
And these two things must be done in the greatest possible calm, peace and tranquillity. This peace, this tranquillity brings about silence in the mind and stillness in the vital.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-7#p16</ref>
<center>~</center>
The cosmos so constructed would be a presentation or reflection of something not itself, but always and to the end a false presentation, a distorted reflection; all cosmic existence would be a Mind struggling to work out fully its imaginations, but not succeeding, because they have no imperative basis of self-truth; overpowered and carried forward by the stream of its own past energies, it would be borne onward indeterminately for ever without issue unless or until it can either slay itself or fall into an eternal stillness.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-divine-maya#p16</ref>
==In the Physical Being==
So the thing to be done … is to remain very objective within that peace; then you can benefit from the peace without accepting its limits. You should, for instance, be able to keep that peace in the cells (the brain cells if you feel tired) without allowing yourself to be enclosed like that <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/04/april-16-1963#p3</ref>
<center>~</center>
...it's these habits of static immobility that give this need for trance. It shouldn't be necessary…, logically, as things are, it depends on the balance between the body's capacity of receptivity and its external activity: it's obviously far more receptive when it is immobile, because its energies are occupied with the transformation. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/08/january-18-1967#p21</ref>
<center>~</center>
...a sort of infinite Power, which could be the creative Power. And directed by an unmanifest Consciousness.... If you can make anything out of this, good for you! <ref> http://incarnateword.in/agenda/03/november-27-1962#p22</ref>
<center>~</center>
There are no more ideas, no more feelings, almost no more sensations, it's... this and that (same gesture of tipping over to one side or to the other), this kind of shift, and a shift SO VERY different, you know, and in total immobility! <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/11/july-11-1970#p67</ref>
<center>~</center>
It is when one is full of peace that one laughs most gladly. It is an inner condition, not something external like being silent or not laughing. It is a condition of serenity and stillness within in which there is no disturbance even if things go wrong or people are unpleasant or the body feels unwell—the state of serene inner gladness remains the same. It is self-existent. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/peace#p48</ref>
<center>~</center>
You can be at once in the state of aspiration, of willing, which calls down something—exactly the will to open oneself and receive, and the aspiration which calls down the force you want to receive—and at the same time be in that state of complete inner stillness which allows full penetration, for it is in this immobility that one can be penetrated, that one becomes permeable by the Force.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/21-april-1954#p26</ref>
<center>~</center>
Well, the two can be simultaneous without the one disturbing the other, or can alternate so closely that they can hardly be distinguished. But one can be like that, like a great flame rising in aspiration, and at the same time as though this flame formed a vase, a large vase, opening and receiving all that comes down. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/21-april-1954#p26</ref>
<center>~</center>
...to be alone somewhere or other and stay like this (gesture of withdrawal into absolute stillness), until everything is back to normal again. Then everything is back to normal, the Lord's Presence is there again. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/08/march-15-1967#p10</ref>
When we get back into our own conscious being, when we stand back from our own action and see how it is done, we discover that it is our whole being which stands behind any particular act or sum of activities, passive in the rest of its integrality, active in its limited dispensation of energy; but that passivity is not an incapable inertia, it is a poise of self-reserved energy. A similar truth must apply still more completely to the conscious being of the Infinite, whose power, in silence of status as in creation, must also be infinite. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-origin-of-the-ignorance#p8</ref>
==In the Mental Being==
An effort? One must, yes, one must want it. But is the will an effort?... Naturally, one must think about it, must want it. But the two things can go together, you see, there is a moment when the two—aspiration and passivity—can be not only alternate but simultaneous.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/21-april-1954#p26</ref>
<center>~</center>
This cannot be done without an uncompromising abolition of the ego-sense at its very basis and source. This, if persistently done, changes in the end the mental outlook on oneself and the whole world and there is a kind of mental realisation; but afterwards by degrees or perhaps rapidly and imperatively and almost at the beginning the mental realisation deepens into spiritual experience—a realisation in the very substance of our being.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-release-from-the-ego#p8</ref>
<center>~</center>
…instead of thought governing life, it's consciousness. And when the consciousness remains quietly open to the Divine, all goes well. A lot of things constantly come into the consciousness, from the whole world, it would seem...all the things that negate or oppose the Divine Action.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/13/august-30-1972#p5</ref>
<center>~</center>
A lonely power, peace and stillness is the last word of the philosophic equality of the sage; but the soul in its integral experience liberates itself from this self-created status and enters into the sea of a supreme and all-embracing ecstasy of the beginningless and endless beatitude of the Eternal.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/equality-and-the-annihilation-of-ego#p10</ref>
<center>~</center>
...once that triple egoism is discouraged or moribund and the instruments of the Spirit are set right and purified, in an entirely pure, silent, clarified, widened consciousness the purity, infinity, stillness of the One reflects itself like the sky in a limpid lake.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-release-from-the-ego#p8</ref>
<center>~</center>
Usually the cessation of the lower activities brings a sense of freedom, release, repose. The inner consciousness does not miss the mental jumpings or the vital swirl—it feels as if the silence were its native element.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/emptiness-voidness-blankness-and-silence#p14 </ref>
<center>~</center>
There is no need to struggle, just remain turned upward.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/agenda/04/april-16-1963#p3</ref>
<center>~</center>
One commences with a method, but the work is taken up by a Grace from above, by a response from That to which one aspires or by an irruption of the infinitudes of the Spirit.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/philosophical-thought-and-yoga#p15</ref>
==In the Vital Being==
stillness, the emptiness of mind and vital and cessation of thoughts and other movements, was the coming of the state called "samadhi" in which the consciousness goes inside in a deep stillness and silence. This condition is favourable to inner experience, realisation, the vision of the unseen truth of things, though one can get these in the waking condition also
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/inner-experiences-in-the-state-of-samadhi#p2</ref>
<center>~</center>
...first, that by this passivity in ourselves we arrive from particular and broken knowledge at a greater, a one and a unifying knowledge;
secondly, that if, in the state of passivity, we open ourselves entirely to what is beyond, we can become aware of a Power acting upon us which we feel to be not our own in the limited egoistic sense, but universal or transcendental, and that this Power works through us for a greater play of knowledge, a greater play of energy, action and result, which also we feel to be not our own, but that of the Divine, of Sachchidananda, ourselves only its field or channel.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/the-origin-of-the-ignorance#p7</ref>
<center>~</center>
It is the silence of the mind and vital—silence implying here not only cessation of thoughts but a stillness of the mental and vital substance. There are varying degrees of depth of this stillness.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p2</ref>
<center>~</center>
At first it comes and stays only during meditation or, without the sense of physical inertness or immobility, a little while longer and afterwards is lost; but if the sadhana follows its normal course, it comes more and more, lasting longer, and in the end an enduring deep peace and inner stillness and release becomes a normal character of the consciousness, the foundation indeed of a new consciousness, calm and liberated.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/descent-and-other-kinds-of-experience#p7</ref>
<center>~</center>
And these two things must be done in the greatest possible calm, peace and tranquillity. This peace, this tranquillity brings about silence in the mind and stillness in the vital.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-7#p16</ref>
==What One must be Aware of During Practice?==
First, you must become conscious of the receiving of energies, their passing into your being and their expenditure. Next, you must have a sort of higher instinct which tells you whence the most favourable energies come; then you put yourself in contact with them through thought, through stillness or any other process—there are many. You must know what energy you want, whence it comes, of what it is composed. Later comes the control of the energy received. Ninety per cent of men do not absorb enough energy or they take in too much and do not assimilate what they take—as soon as they have had a sufficient dose they immediately throw it out by becoming restless, talking, shouting, You must know how to keep within you the received energy and concentrate it fully on the desired activity and not on anything else. If you can do this, you won't need to use your will. You need only gather together all the energies received and use them consciously, concentrate with the maximum attention in order to do everything you want.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/23-december-1950#p4</ref>
=What Stillness Means at a Yogic Level=