1,727
edits
Changes
→Silence and Conscious Sleep
The sleep you describe in which there is a luminous silence or else the sleep in which there is Ananda in the cells, these are obviously the best states. The other hours, those of which you are unconscious, may be spells of a deep slumber in which you have gone out of the physical into the mental, vital or other planes. You say you were unconscious, but it may simply be that you do not remember what happened; for in coming back there is a sort of turning over of the consciousness, a transition or reversal, in which everything experienced in sleep except perhaps the last happening of all or else one that was very impressive, recedes from the physical awareness and all becomes as if a blank. There is another blank state, a state of inertia, not truly blank, but heavy and unremembering; but that is when one goes deeply and crassly into the subconscient; this subterranean plunge is very undesirable, obscuring, lowering, often fatiguing rather than restful, the reverse of the luminous silence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/sleep#p50</ref>
== Silence and Progress ==
Silence: the ideal condition for progress. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p1</ref>
It is only in silence that a true progress can be made; it is only in silence that one can rectify a wrong movement; it is only in silence that one can be of help to somebody else. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p3</ref>
There is a greater power in silence than in words, however forceful. The greatest transformations have been achieved in the silence of concentration. (The Mother, 2 November 1970) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/2-november-1970#p1</ref>
In order to allow at all to the higher Light an adequate entry and force of working, it is necessary to acquire a power for quietude of the nature, to compose, tranquillise, impress a controlled passivity or even an entire silence on mind and heart, life and body. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-ascent-towards-supermind#p26</ref>
You see, for those who are sincere, sincere and very—how to put it?—very straight in their aspiration, there is a marvellous help, there is an absolutely living, active consciousness which is ready to... to respond to any attentive silence. You could do six years' work in six months, but there should... there should not be any pretension, there should not be anything which tries to imitate, there should be no wanting to put on airs. There should... you should be truly, absolutely honest, pure, sincere, conscious that... you exist only by what comes from above. Then... then... then you could advance with giant strides. (The Mother, 11 November 1967) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/11-november-1967#p159</ref>
Now, there is a greater depth of pain which leaves you in an absolute silence and opens the inner doors to greater depths which can put you in immediate touch with the Divine. But this indeed is not expressed in words. It changes your consciousness; but usually a long time elapses before one can say anything about it. (The Mother, 20 October, 1954) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/20-october-1954#p71</ref>
The peace and silence must settle deep in, so deep that whatever comes from outside can only pass over the surface without troubling the settled calm within—it is good also that the meditation comes of itself. It means that the Yoga-Force is beginning to take up the sadhana. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/peace#p7</ref>
= How to Practice Silence? =