Changes

<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Mental silence is a certain calmness. This does not necessarily mean that there are no thoughts; it means that regardless of the number, frequency and intensity of thoughts, the mind-substance remains peaceful. </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The key to keeping the mind calm is treating thoughts as a temporary guest in the mind</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">, and not to prevent these surface thoughts from entering or eliminating inner thoughts of clarity, light and deeper aspiration. </span>

<div style="color:#000000;">Sri Aurobindo writes “The difference between a vacant mind and a calm mind is this: when the mind is vacant, there is no thought, no conception, no mental action of any kind, except an essential perception of things without the formed idea; but in the calm mind, it is the substance of the mental being that is still, so still that nothing disturbs it. If thoughts or activities come, they do not rise at all out of the mind, but they come from outside…”</div>

<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Peace and mental silence go hand-in-hand. </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Mental silence is not a state in which one feels empty and devoid of thoughts. On the contrary, mental silence comes about when peace as a substance enters one’s mind from higher planes.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">In this solid peace, one is unperturbed by the coming and going of thoughts, as at the maximum they scratch the surface of the rock-solid peace.</span>

<div style="color:#000000;">Sri Aurobindo says “Peace is a deep quietude where no disturbance can come - a quietude with a sense of established security and release. In complete silence there are either no thoughts or, if they come, they are felt as something coming from outside and not disturbing the silence. The silence of the mind, peace or calm in the mind are three things that are very close together and bring each other.”</div>

<div style="color:#000000;">After the discovery of quiet and calm peace, one must strive to ensure that it occupies all parts of one’s being. This state must widen and one must lose himself in it and become one with it. When one has widened his/her consciousness sufficiently enough to dissolve in and experience the all-pervasive, timeless and infinite peace, the receptivity to the Divine will be enhanced. </div>

<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Sri Aurobindo says “</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The wider your consciousness becomes, the more you will be able to receive from above.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The Shakti will be able to descend and bring strength and light as well as peace into the system. What you feel as narrow and limited in you is the physical mind; it can only widen if this wider consciousness and the light come down and possess the nature.”</span>

<div style="color:#000000;">When peace and wideness are established in the silent mind, it can become the base for further Light, Delight, Force to come in and act. One then becomes an instrument for the higher consciousness and does not lose any incoming higher knowledge, force and will, through any ‘mentalising’ movements.</div>