== Silence and Work ==
I said once It is only in silence thatanything great can be done. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/india#p59</ref> All speech and action comes prepared out of the eternal Silence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-277-278#p1</ref> For the action is based on the silence and by the silence it is free. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/christianity-and-theosophy#p16</ref> In silence lies the greatest receptivity. And in an immobile silence the vastest action is done. (The Mother, to speak usefully for ten minutes19 December 1971) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/19-december-1971#p1</ref> In the silence of the heart, you should remain silent for ten dayswill receive the command. <ref>http://incarnateword. I could add that, in/cwm/14/silence#p7</ref> To know how to act usefully observe in silence is the source of skillfulness. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/progress-and-perfection-in-work#p63</ref> In concentration and silence we must gather strength for one day, you should keep quiet the right action. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p16</ref> Whatever has been done in the world has been done by the very few who can stand outside the action in silence; for a year! Of course, I am not speaking it is they who are the instruments of the ordinary day-to-day acts that Divine Power. They are needed for dynamic agents, conscious instruments; they bring down the common external life, but of those who have or believe forces that they have something to do for change the world. And the Things can be done in that way, not by a restless activity. In peace, in silence I speak of is and in quietness the inner quietude world was built; and each time that those alone have who can act without being identified with their actionsomething is to be truly built, merged into it is in peace and blinded silence and deafened by the noise quietness that it must be done. It is ignorance to believe that you must run from morning to night and form labour at all sorts of their own movementfutile things in order to do something for the world. (The Mother, 26 May 1929) <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/26-may-1929#p30p28</ref> In any case, as the perfect man would combine in himself the silence and the activity, so also would the completely conscious soul reach back to the absolute freedom of the Non-Being without therefore losing its hold on Existence and the universe. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/reality-omnipresent#p14</ref>
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. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/29-august-1956#p4</ref>
The recurrence of the experience of the receding away of thoughts, the cessation of the thought-generating mechanism and its replacement by the mental self-space, is normal and as it should be; for this silence or at any rate the capacity for it has to grow until one can have it at will or even established in an automatic permanence. For this silence of the ordinary mind-mechanism is necessary in order that the higher mentality may manifest, descend, occupy by degrees the place of the present imperfect mentality and transform the activities of the latter into its own fuller movements. The difficulty of its coming when you are at work is only at the beginning—afterwards when it is more settled one finds that one can carry on all the activities of life either in the pervading silence itself or at least with that as the support and background. The silence remains behind and there is the necessary action on the surface or the silence is our wide self and somewhere in it an active Power does the works of Nature without disturbing the silence. It is therefore quite right to suspend the work while the visitation of the experience is there—the development of this inner silent consciousness is sufficiently important to justify a brief interruption or pause. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/three-experiences-of-the-inner-being#p4</ref>
== Silence and Education ==