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Read Summary of '''[[Silence Summary|Silence]]'''
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= What is Silence? =
Silence: the condition of the being when it listens to the Divine. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p27 </ref>
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Silence is the absence of all motion of thought or other vibration of activity. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p13 </ref>
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The stilling of this current, running, circling, repeating thought-mind is the principal part of that silencing of the thought which is one of the most effective disciplines of Yoga. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/purification-intelligence-and-will#p12</ref>
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Silence is always good; but I do not mean by quietness of mind entire silence. I mean a mind free from disturbance and trouble, steady, light and glad so as to be open to the Force that will change the nature. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p18</ref>
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The stillness of the mind means, first, the falling to rest of the habitual thought movements, thought formations, thought currents which agitate this mind-substance. That repose, vacancy of movement, is for many a sufficient mental silence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/philosophical-thought-and-yoga#p21</ref>
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It is in silence or quietude that we feel most firmly the Something that is behind the world shown to us by our mind and senses. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/reality-and-the-cosmic-illusion#p24</ref>
== Importance Silence as it is Different From Related States== The words “peace, calm, quiet, silence” have each their own shade of meaning, but it is not easy to define them. Peace—śānti. Calm—sthiratā. Quiet—acañcalatā. Silence—niścala-nīravatā. Quiet is a condition in which there is no restlessness or disturbance. Calm is a still, unmoved condition which no disturbance can affect—it is a less negative condition than quiet. Peace is a still more positive condition; it carries with it a sense of settled and harmonious rest and deliverance. Silence is a state in which either there is no movement of the mind or vital or else a great stillness which no surface movement can pierce or alter. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p1,p2,p3,p4,p5,p6,p7,p8,p9</ref> <center>~</center> Silence of the mind, peace or calm in the mind are three things that are very close together and bring each other. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p19</ref> === Quietude === Quiet is rather negative—it is the absence of disturbance. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p10</ref> <center>~</center> The first step is a quiet mind—silence is a farther step, but quietude must be there, and by a quiet mind I mean a mental consciousness within which sees thoughts arrive to it and move about, but does not itself feel that it is thinking or identify itself with the thoughts or call them its own. Thoughts, mental movements may pass through it as wayfarers appear and pass from elsewhere through a silent country—the quiet mind observes them or does not care to observe them but in either case does not become active or lose its quietude.
== Inner Silence ==
It is really an inner silence that is needed—a something silent within that looks at outer talk and action but feels it as something superficial, not as itself and is quite indifferent and untouched by it. It can bring forces to support speech and action or it can stop them by withdrawal or it can let them go on and observe without being involved or moved. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p76</ref>
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To make yourself blank in meditation creates an inner silence; it does not mean that you have become nothing or have become a dead and inert mass. Making yourself an empty vessel, you invite that which shall fill it. It means that you release the stress of your inner consciousness towards realisation. The nature of the consciousness and the degree of its stress determine the forces that you bring into play and whether they shall help and fulfil or fail or even harm and hinder. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/23-june-1929#p21</ref>
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This condition you had of the inner being and its silence, separated from the surface consciousness and its little restless workings, is the first liberation, the liberation of Purusha from Prakriti, and it is the fundamental experience. The day when you can keep it, you can know that the Yogic consciousness has been founded in you. This time it has increased in intensity, but it must also increase in duration. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p82></ref>
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The condition you describe shows precisely the growth of this inner silence. It has to fix itself eventually as the basis of all spiritual experience and activity. It does not matter if one does not know what is going on within behind the silence. For there are two conditions in the Yoga, one in which all is silent and there is no thought, feeling or movement even though one is acting outwardly as others do—another in which a new consciousness becomes active bringing knowledge, joy, love and other spiritual feelings and inner activities, but yet at the same time there is a fundamental silence or quietude. Both are necessary in the development of the inner being. The absolutely silent state, which is one of lightness, voidness and release, prepares the other and supports it when it comes.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p25</ref>
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Remain very quiet, open your mind and your heart to Sri Aurobindo's influence and mine, withdraw deep into an inner silence (which may be had in all circumstances), call me from the depths of this silence and you will see me standing there in the centre of your being. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/letters-to-a-young-sadhak-iii#p12</ref>
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All experiences come in the silence but they do not come all pell-mell in a crowd at the beginning. The inner silence and peace have first to be established. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p79</ref>
What one feels first [in the silence] is the pure existence of the self, without any idea, characteristic or movement—existence pure and simple, Sat Brahman—or else one feels that and a vast peace and wideness. Afterwards other things are felt such as Ananda, but always with this as the basis. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/experiences-of-the-self-the-one-and-the-infinite#p7</ref>
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There is no distinction between the Self and the spirit. The psychic is the soul that develops in the evolution—the spirit is the Self that is not affected by the evolution, it is above it—only it is covered or concealed by the activity of mind, vital and body. The removal of this covering is the release of the spirit—and it is removed when there is a full and wide spiritual silence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-psychic-being#p18</ref>
== Silence in the Physical ==
''Q. What is meant by the "silence of the physical consciousness" and how can one remain in this silence?'' ''A.'' The physical consciousness is not only the consciousness of our body, but of all that surrounds us as well all that we perceive with our senses. It is a sort of apparatus for recording and transmission which is open to all the contacts and shocks coming from outside and responds to them by reactions of pleasure and pain which welcome or repel. This makes in our outer being a constant activity and noise that we are only partially aware of, because we are so accustomed to them.But if through meditation or concentration we turn inward or upward, we can bring down into ourselves or raise up from the depths calm, quiet, peace and finally silence. It is a concrete, positive silence (not the negative silence of the absence of noise), immutable so long as it remains, a silence one can experience even in the outer tumult of a hurricane or battlefield. This silence is synonymous with peace and it is all-powerful; it is the perfectly effective remedy for the fatigue, tension and exhaustion arising from that internal over-activity and noise which generally escape our control and cease neither by day nor night.This is why the first thing required when one wants to do Yoga is to bring down and establish in oneself the calm, the peace, the silence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/15-october-1959#p2</ref> If the peace and silence continue to come down, they usually become so intense as to seize the physical mind also after a time. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/concentration-and-meditation#p79</ref> Certainly, peace, purity and silence can be felt in all material things—for the Divine Self is there in all. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/peace#p27</ref> == Subconscient == As for the subconscient that is best dealt with when the opening of the consciousness to what comes down from above is complete. Then one becomes aware of the subconscient as a separate domain and can bring down into it the silence and all else that comes from above. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-subconscient-and-the-integral-yoga#p49</ref> == Silence and the Supramental Consciousness == The silence of the mind does not of itself bring in the supramental consciousness; there are many states or planes or levels of consciousness between the human mind and the Supermind. The silence opens the mind and the rest of the being to greater things, sometimes to the cosmic consciousness, sometimes to the experience of the silent Self, sometimes to the presence or power of the Divine, sometimes to a higher consciousness than that of the human mind; the mind's silence is the most favourable condition for any of these things to happen. In this Yoga it is the most favourable condition (not the only one) for the Divine Power to descend first upon and then into the individual consciousness and there do its work to transform that consciousness, giving it the necessary experiences, altering all its outlook and movements, leading it from stage to stage till it is ready for the last (supramental) change. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-force-in-work#p7 </ref> <center>~</center> Every kind of realisation—infinite self, cosmic consciousness, the Mother's Presence, Light, Force, Ananda, Knowledge, Sachchidananda realisation, the different layers of consciousness up to the Supermind—all these can come in the silence which remains but ceases to be blank. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/emptiness-voidness-blankness-and-silence#p37</ref> = Why is Silence Important? = In silence lies the greatest devotion. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/6-april-1972#p1</ref> <center>~</center> In a quiet silence strength is restored. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p10</ref> <center>~</center>
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If the calm and silence are perfectly established in the physical, then if inertia comes it is itself something quiet and unaggressive, not bringing such disturbances. But to get rid of inertia altogether a strong dynamic calm is needed. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/difficulties-of-the-physical-nature#p28</ref>
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If the physical being has felt and assimilated the silence and peace, then inertia ought not to rise up. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/difficulties-of-the-physical-nature#p29</ref>
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>
= == Effective Rest === To relieve tension, ten minutes of real calm, inner and outer, are more effective than all the remedies in the world. In silence lies the most effective help. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/30-january-1939#p8</ref> <center>~</center> The fact is that like all the other parts of the human being, the mind too needs rest and it will not have this rest unless we know how to provide it. The art of resting one's mind is something to be acquired. Changing one's mental activity is certainly one way of resting; but the greatest possible rest is silence. And as far as the mental faculties are concerned a few minutes passed in the calm of silence are a more effective rest than hours of sleep. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mental-education#p21</ref> <center>~</center> The rest must not be one which goes down into the inconscience and tamas. The rest must be an ascent into the Light, into perfect Peace, total Silence, a rest which rises up out of the darkness. Then it is true rest, a rest which is an ascent. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/31-august-1955#p21</ref> === Rest in Silence=== There is nothing wrong in having intervals of passive peace without anything happening—they come naturally in the sadhana as a basis for fresh action when the nature is ready for it. It is only the vital attitude that turns it into a disharmony, Activity because somewhere in its being there is not the assent to or participation in the peace and Action passivity. To be able often to rest, repose in all the being outspread in the silent Brahman is an indispensable thing for the Yogi. But the vital wants always fuss, action, to feel that it is somebody doing something, getting on, having progress, on the move. The counterpart to this rajasic fuss is inertia. If the whole being can widen itself out, rest satisfied in the silence, then progressively inertia fades out and gives place to ''śama''. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/variations-in-the-intensity-of-experience#p32</ref> <center>~</center> == Silence for Progress == Silence: the ideal condition for progress. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p1</ref> <center>~</center> 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> <center>~</center> There is a greater power in silence than in words, however forceful. The greatest transformations have been achieved in the silence of concentration. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/2-november-1970#p1</ref> <center>~</center>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>It is only in silence that anything great can be done.~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/india#p59</refcenter>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>In silence lies the greatest receptivity. And in an immobile silence the vastest action is done. ~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>In the silence of the heart, you will receive the command.~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p7</refcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>In concentration and silence we must gather strength for the right action.~</span<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p16</refcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>But there can be an action in the Silence, undisturbed even as the universal action goes on in the cosmic Silence.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p31</ref></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>The Mother, 26 May 1929)~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/26-may-1929#p28</refcenter>
Silence... Oh! It is better to practise it than to talk about it. <div style="colorref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-111-112#000000;">(The Mother, 19 January 1955)p4</divref>
<refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/19-january-1955#p26~</refcenter>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>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. ~</divcenter>
The principal business of our mind is either a response of acceptance or refusal to these thought-waves (as also vital waves, subtle physical energy waves) or this giving a personal-mental form to thought-stuff (or vital movements) from the environing Nature Force. It was my great debt to Lele that he showed me this. "Sit in meditation," he said, "but do not think, look only at your mind; you will see thoughts coming into it; before they can enter throw them away from you till your mind is capable of entire silence." I had never heard before of thoughts coming visibly into the mind from outside, but I did not think of either questioning the truth or the possibility, I simply sat down and did it. In a moment my mind became silent as a windless air on a high mountain summit and then I saw a thought and then another thought coming in a concrete way from outside; I flung them away before they could enter and take hold of the brain and in three days I was free. From that moment, in principle, the mental being in me became a free Intelligence, a universal Mind, not limited to the narrow circle of personal thought or a labourer in a thought-factory, but a receiver of knowledge from all the hundred realms of being and free too to choose what it willed in this vast sight-empire and thought-empire. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/2131/realitythought-and-omnipresentknowledge#p14p9</ref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>One can have a quiet mind without being in a complete state of silence; one can carry on an activity without being disturbed. The ideal is to be able to act without coming out of the mental quietude.~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>It is precisely by action in silence that we can best do our work much more than by speech or writing, which can only be subordinate and secondary. For in this Yoga those will succeed best who know how to obey and follow the written and spoken word, but can also bear the silence and feel in it and receive (without listening to other voices or mistaking mental and vital suggestions and impulsions for the divine Truth and the divine Will) help, support and guidance.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-lower-vital-being#p36</ref></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">As for calm and silence, there is no need of the supramental to get that. One can get it even on the level of Higher Mind which is the next above the human intelligence. I got these things in 1908, twenty-seven years ago and I can assure you they were solid enough and marvellous enough without any need of supramentality to make it more so! Again, a calm that "seems like motion" is a phenomenon of which I know nothing. A calm or silence which can support or produce action—that I know and that is what I have had—the proof is that out of an absolute silence of the mind I edited the Bande Mataram for four months and wrote 6½ volumes of the Arya, not to speak of all the letters and messages etc. etc. I have written since. If you say that writing is not an action or motion but only something that seems like it, a jugglery of the consciousness,—well, still out of that calm and silence I conducted a pretty strenuous political activity and have also taken my share in keeping up an Asram which has at least an appearance to the physical senses of being solid and </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">material!</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-supermind-or-supramental#p45</ref></spancenter>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>In silence lies the greatest receptivity. And in an immobile silence the vastest action is done. ~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>''(Another child) Mother, when you speak we try to understand with the mind, but when you communicate something in silence, on what part of the being should we concentrate?''~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is always better, for meditation—you see, we use the word "meditation", but it does not necessarily mean "moving ideas around in the head", quite the contrary—it is always better to try to concentrate in a centre, the centre of aspiration, one might say, the place where the flame of aspiration burns, to gather in all the energies there, at the solar plexus centre and, if possible, to obtain an attentive silence as though one wanted to listen to something extremely subtle, something that demands a complete attention, a complete concentration and total silence. And then not to move at all. Not to think, not to stir, and make that movement of opening so as to receive all that can be received, but taking good care not to try to know what is happening while it is happening, for if one wants to understand or even to observe actively, it keeps up a sort of cerebral activity which is unfavourable to the fullness of the receptivity—to be silent, as totally silent as possible, in an attentive concentration, and then be still. </spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother, 23 July 1958)~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/23-july-1958#p10</refcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>This kind of revelation can only occur in a silent mind—at least in a mind that is at rest, completely quiet and still, otherwise they do not come. Or if they come, you do not notice them, because of all the noise you are making. And of course, they help this quiet, this silence, this receptivity to become better and better established. This feeling of something so still—but not closed, still but open, still but receptive—is something which becomes established through repeated experiences. There is a great difference between a silence that is dead, dull, unresponsive and the receptive silence of a quietened mind. That makes a great difference. But that is the result of these experiences. All the progress we make always results, quite naturally, from truths coming from above.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-77-78#p20</ref></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother, 29 August 1956)~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/29-august-1956#p7</ref></spancenter>
''A.'' It is always better, for meditation—you see, we use the word "meditation", but it does not necessarily mean "moving ideas around in the head", quite the contrary—it is always better to try to concentrate in a centre, the centre of aspiration, one might say, the place where the flame of aspiration burns, to gather in all the energies there, at the solar plexus centre and, if possible, to obtain an attentive silence as though one wanted to listen to something extremely subtle, something that demands a complete attention, a complete concentration and total silence. And then not to move at all. Not to think, not to stir, and make that movement of opening so as to receive all that can be received, but taking good care not to try to know what is happening while it is happening, for if one wants to understand or even to observe actively, it keeps up a sort of cerebral activity which is unfavourable to the fullness of the receptivity—to be silent, as totally silent as possible, in an attentive concentration, and then be still. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsacwm/2409/the5-intuitivejune-mind1957#p5p19</ref>
== Knowing in Silence ==
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>With words one can at times understand, but only in silence one knows.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p26</ref></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>It is only in perfect quietness and silence, free from all prejudices and preferences, that the consciousness can perceive the truth.~</spancenter>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/work-and-teaching-1#p28 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/work-and-teaching-1#p28]
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>But the timeless self knowledge of this Eternal is beyond mind; it is a supramental knowledge superconscient to us and only to be acquired by the stilling or transcending of the temporal activity of our conscious mind, by an entry into Silence or a passage through Silence into the consciousness of eternity.~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/memory-self-consciousness-and-the-ignorance#p5</refcenter>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>Behind the common idea that a Yogi can know all things and answer all questions is the actual fact that there is a plane in the mind where the memory of everything is stored and remains always in existence. All mental movements that belong to the life of the earth are memorised and registered in this plane. Those who are capable of going there and care to take the trouble, can read in it and learn anything they choose. But this region must not be mistaken for the supramental levels. And yet to reach even there you must be able to silence the movements of the material or physical mind; you must be able to leave aside all your sensations and put a stop to your ordinary mental movements, whatever they are; you must get out of the vital; you must become free from the slavery of the body. Then only you can enter into that region and see. But if you are sufficiently interested to make this effort, you can arrive there and read what is written in the earth's memory.~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>No, you don't understand. To go to that place, at the time of going you must be able to completely silence the mind (and all the other things I have mentioned), but just for going there. For example, you decide: "Now, I am going to read such and such a chapter of earth's history", then you lounge comfortably in an easy-chair, you tell people not to disturb you, you go within yourself and completely stop your mind, and you send your mental messenger to that place.... It is preferable to have someone who can guide you there, because otherwise you can lose your way and go elsewhere! And then you go. It is like a very big library with many many small compartments. So you find the compartment corresponding to the information you wish to have. You press a button and it opens. And inside it you find a scroll as it were, a mental formation which unrolls before you like a parchment, and you read. And then you make a note of what you have read and afterwards return quietly into your body with the new knowledge, and you may transcribe physically, if you can, what you have found, and then you get up and start your life as before.... This may take you ten minutes, it may take one hour, it may take half an hour, it depends upon your capacity, but it is important to know the way, as I said, in order not to make a mistake. (The Mother, 30 September 1953)~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/30-september-1953#p6</ref></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">If intellectual culture is carried to its furthest limit, it leads the mind to the unsatisfactory acknowledgement that it is incapable of knowing the Truth and, in those who aspire sincerely, to the necessity of being quiet and opening in silence to the higher regions which can give you knowledge.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-160-161#p5</ref></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>In a general and almost absolute way, if you truly wish to profit from these readings, as from all of Sri Aurobindo's writings, the best method is this: having gathered your consciousness and focused your attention on what you are reading, you must establish a minimum of mental tranquillity—the best thing would be to obtain perfect silence—and achieve a state of immobility of the mind, immobility of the brain, I might say, so that the attention becomes as still and immobile as a mirror, like the surface of absolutely still water. Then what one has read passes through the surface and penetrates deep into the being where it is received with a minimum of distortion. Afterwards—sometimes long afterwards—it wells up again from the depths and manifests in the brain with its full power of comprehension, not as knowledge acquired from outside, but as a light one carried within.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-2#p19</ref></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>I can't say that the reading of literature equips one better to understand Sri Aurobindo. On the contrary, it can be a hindrance. For, the same words are used and the purpose for which they are used is so different from the purpose for which Sri Aurobindo has made use of them, the manner in which they have been put together to express things is so different from Sri Aurobindo's that these words tend to put one off from the light which Sri Aurobindo wants to convey to us through them. To get to Sri Aurobindo's light we must empty our minds of all that literature has said and done. We must go inward and stay in a receptive silence and turn it upward. Then alone we get something in the right way. At the worst, I have seen that the study of literature makes one silly and perverse enough to sit in judgment on Sri Aurobindo's English and find fault with his grammar!~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/reading#p31</ref></spancenter>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>I don't know if any of you are so fond of music as to know how to hear it. But if you want to listen to music, you must create an absolute silence in your head, you must not follow or accept a single thought, and must be entirely concentrated, like a sort of screen which receives, without movement or noise, the vibration of the music. That is the only way, there is no other, the only way of hearing music and understanding it. If you admit in the least the movements and fancies of your thought, the whole value of the music escapes you. Well, to understand a teaching which is not quite of the ordinary material kind but implies an opening to something more deep within, this necessity of silence is far greater still. If, instead of listening to what you are told, you begin to jump on the idea in order to ask another question or even to discuss what is said under the false pretext of understanding better, all that you are told passes like smoke without leaving any effect. ~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>To hear it one should make oneself as silent and passive as possible. And if, in the mental silence, a part of the being can take the attitude of the witness who observes without reacting or participating, then one can take account of the effect which the music produces on the feelings and emotions; and if it produces a state of deep calm and of semi-trance, then that is quite good.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p81</ref></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">In the same way as one can share the emotions of another person by sympathy, spontaneously, by an affinity more or less deep, or else by an effort of concentration which ends in identification. It is this last process that one adopts when one listens to music with an intense and concentrated attention, to the point of checking all other noise in the head and obtaining a complete silence, into which fall, by drop, the notes of the music whose sound alone remains; and with the sound all the feelings, all the movements of emotion can be perceived, experienced, felt as if they were produced in ourselves.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p84</ref></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>Fight, while thy hands are free, with thy hands and thy voice and thy brain and all manner of weapons. Art thou chained in the enemy's dungeons and have his gags silenced thee? Fight with thy silent all besieging soul and thy wide-ranging will-power and when thou art dead, fight still with the world-encompassing force that went out from God within thee.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-272-273#p3</ref></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>If you don't do that, you are wasting your time, and, into the bargain, wasting mine. That's a proved fact. I thought I had already told you this several times, but still perhaps I didn't tell you clearly enough. If you come here, come with the intention of listening in silence. What happens you will know later; the effect of this silent attitude you will recognise later; but for the moment, the only thing to do is to be like this (gesture), silent, immobile, attentive, concentrated. ~</spancenter>
<refcenter>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-supramental-sense#p12~</refcenter>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>In making a noise? Because they like to deaden themselves. In silence they have to face their own difficulties, they are in front of themselves, and usually they don't like that. In the noise they forget everything, they become stupefied. So they are happy. ~</divcenter>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>To try to solve this problem ascetics used to go away into forests and sit under a tree; there, of course, they had not to fear any contagion from other human beings. But it is very difficult to go to the very end of this resolution, for it quickly gets known that a saint is sitting under a tree in meditation, and immediately everybody rushes there! Not only does he not escape from the difficulty, but he increases it, for there is not a thing more dangerous than to teach others. You know just a little and you begin to teach others, and you are immediately compelled to say more than you know, because people put questions to you which you cannot answer, unless you are a hero of silence. In the world, those who want to pass themselves off as spiritual teachers—when people come and ask them something they do not know, they invent it. ~</divcenter>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/5-february-1951#p12</refcenter>~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>The descent of the peace is often one of the first major positive experiences of the sadhana. In this state of peace the normal thought-mind (buddhi) is apt to fall silent or abate most of its activity and, when it does, very often either this vital mind can rush in, if one is not on one's guard, or else a kind of mechanical physical or random subconscient mind can begin to come up and act; these are the chief disturbers of the silence. Or else the lower vital mind can try to disturb; that brings up the ego and passions and their play. All these are signs of elements that have to be got rid of, because if they remain and other of the higher powers begin to descend, Power and Force, Knowledge, Love or Ananda, those lower things may come across with the result that either the higher consciousness retires or its descent is covered up and the stimulation it gives is misused for the purposes of the lower nature. This is the reason why many sadhaks after having big experiences fall into the clutch of a magnified ego, upheavals, ambition, exaggerated sex or other vital passions or distortions. It is always well therefore if a complete purification of the vital can either precede or keep pace with the positive experience—at least in natures in which the vital is strongly active.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-mind#p48</ref></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>When I wanted to send the groups ashore, those who were to land knew it automatically without my having to say a word, and they came up in turn. Everything went on in silence, there was no need to speak to make oneself understood; but the silence itself on board the ship did not give that impression of artificiality it does here. Here, when one wants silence, one must stop talking; silence is the opposite of sound. There the silence was vibrant, living, active and comprehensive, comprehensible. (The Mother, 19 February 1958)~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/19-february-1958#p32</refcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>Silence... Oh! It is better to practise it than to talk about it.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-111-112#p4</ref></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>Practise silence of mind, it gives power of understanding.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-mind#p85</ref></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Wait quietly for the exact indication; all mental intervention and decisions are arbitrary. The clear indication comes in the silence of the mind.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-mind#p89</ref></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is only in mental silence that you can hear the voice without distorting it—be very peaceful.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-mind#p92</ref></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>A respectful and modest silence is the only attitude befitting a disciple.~</spancenter>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/control-of-speech#p39 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/control-of-speech#p39]
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>There is an active method by which one looks to see where the thoughts come from and finds they come not from oneself, but from outside the head as it were; if one can detect them coming, then, before they enter, they have to be thrown away altogether. This is perhaps the most difficult way and not all can do it, but if it can be done it is the shortest and most powerful road to silence.~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/concentration-and-meditation#p24</refcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>Not to be disturbed by either joy or grief, pleasure or displeasure by what people say or do or by any outward things is called in Yoga a state of samatā, equality to all things.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is of immense importance in sadhana to be able to reach this state. It helps the mental quietude and silence as well as the vital to come. It means indeed that the vital itself and the vital mind are already falling silent and becoming quiet. The thinking mind is sure to follow.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/interactions-with-others-and-the-practice-of-yoga#p100</ref></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>To remain in silence as much as possible is good for a time. But entire retirement is seldom found to be helpful—the lower movements may remain quiescent owing to want of stimulus from outside, but do not disappear. For that you must be able to ~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">get an inner quietude and a mastery over the outer movements </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">which will resist any atmosphere.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p74</ref></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>The silence in the head and heart and the emptiness are both necessary~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">and desirable. When they are there, the consciousness finds them natural and they give it the sense of lightness and release; that is why the thoughts or speech of the old kind are foreign to it and when they come give fatigue. This silence and emptiness must grow, so that the higher consciousness with its knowledge, light, Ananda, peace can come down in it and progressively replace the old things. They must indeed occupy not only head and heart but the whole body.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/experiences-of-the-self-the-one-and-the-infinite#p25</ref></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>Ah! First ~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">you must will it,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">and then you must say, as to people who make a lot of noise, "Keep quiet, be quiet, be quiet!"; you must do this when the mind comes along with all its suggestions and all its movements. You must tranquillise it, pacify it, make it silent. The first thing is not to listen to it. Most of the time, as soon as all these come, all these thoughts, one looks, seeks to understand, one listens; then naturally that imbecile believes that you are very much interested: it increases its activity. You must not listen, must not pay attention. If it makes too much noise, you must tell it: "Be still! Now then, silence, keep quiet!" without making a lot of noise yourself, you understand? You must not imitate those people who begin shouting: "Keep quiet", and make such a noise themselves that they are even noisier than the others!</spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>At first whenever I fell back into sin, I used to weep and rage against myself and against God for having suffered it. Afterwards it was as much as I could dare to ask, "Why hast thou rolled me again in the mud, O my playfellow?" Then even that came to my mind to seem too bold and presumptuous; I could only get up in silence, look at him out of the corner of my eyes—and clean myself.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-462-463#p3</ref></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The cure is not in trying to wake up the mind but in turning it, immobile and silent, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">upward towards the region of intuitive light, in a steady and quiet aspiration, and to wait in silence, for the light to come down </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">and flood your brain which will, little by little, wake up to this influence and become capable of receiving and expressing the intuition.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/study#p88</ref></spancenter>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>Among people who meditate there are some who know how to meditate, who concentrate not on an idea, but in silence, in an inner contemplation in which they say they reach even a union with the Divine; and that is perfectly all right. There are others, just a few, who can follow an idea closely and try to find exactly what it means; that too is all right. Most of the time people try to concentrate and enter into a kind of half sleepy and, in any case, very tamasic state. They become some kind of inert thing; the mind is inert, the feeling is inert, the body is immobile. They can remain like that for hours, for there is nothing more durable than inertia! All this that I am telling you now—these are experiences of people I have met. And these people, when they come out of their meditation, sincerely believe they have done something very great. But they have simply gone down into inertia and unconsciousness.~</divcenter>
To hear it one should make oneself as silent and passive as possible. And if, in the mental silence, a part of the being can take the attitude of the witness who observes without reacting or participating, then one can take account of the effect which the music produces on the feelings and emotions; and if it produces a state of deep calm and of semi-trance, then that is quite good. <div style="colorref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#000000;">(The Mother, 13 May 1953)p81</divref>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/13-may-1953#p5</refcenter>~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>Silence: the ideal condition for progress.~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p1</ref></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span><http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p3</refcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother, 2 November 1970)~</span><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/2-november-1970#p1</refcenter>
<div style="color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-ascent-towards-supermind#p26</refcenter>~</divcenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>(The Mother, 20 October, 1954)~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/20-october-1954#p71</ref></spancenter>
== Connecting to Divine = Resting in Silence ===
== Surrender in Silence = Practice of Samata (Equanimity) ===
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>The best is to keep silent and look well at things, and little by little ~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">you make notes within yourself and keep the record without pronouncing any judgment.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">When you are able to keep all that within you, quietly, without agitation and present it very calmly before the highest part of your consciousness, with an attempt to maintain an </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">attentive silence, and wait, then perhaps, slowly, as if coming from a far distance and from a great height, something like a light will manifest and you will know a little more of truth. </spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>That is not the way. Absolute silence and looseness of talk are two extremes; neither is good. I have seen many people practising maunavrata, but afterwards they are just as talkative as before.~</spancenter>
== Concentrating together in Silence Interference by Mental Forces == The danger of the mental forces is that when the higher consciousness descends they tend (unless there is a deep silence) to become active in the consciousness for forming ideas of a mental type which can always be misapplied. First, there should be a basis of entire calm, peace and silence—if there is activity, it should be that of a knowledge coming down and the mind silent receiving it accurately. This you can easily have, provided the mind is quiet. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/descent-and-the-lower-nature#p14</ref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>These rare moments of silence and the effort to concentrate together―if not to meditate―are they not an opportunity to receive your force and to open ourselves a little more to you and to Sri Aurobindo, helping to form our collective soul?~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/community-affairs#p144</ref></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Concentrating together is indeed a very good thing and helps you to become conscious. But </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">it cannot be imposed. I advise you and them to organise this moment of silence daily for all those who want to participate, but without imposing anything on the others. It is not compulsory but it is good.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/community-affairs#p146</ref></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>I met an Indian who was a great Gita enthusiast and a very great lover of silence. He used to say, "When I go to my disciples, if they are in the right state I don't need to speak. So we observe silence together, and in the silence something is realised. But when they are not in a good enough state for this, I speak a little, just a little, to try to put them in the right state. And when they are in a worse state still, they ask questions!" (The Mother, 4 April 1956) ~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/4-april-1956#p13</ref></spancenter>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>A moment of ~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">silence</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">and concentration is always good for all the children. But the prayer should not be compulsory. Those who want to do it will be encouraged. I suggest that you put up a notice-board in the classroom with these words written on it in large letters:</spancenter>
In the entirely silent mind there is usually the static sense of the Divine without any active movement. But there can come into it all higher thought and aspiration and movements. There is then no absolute silence but one feels a fundamental silence behind which is not disturbed by any movement. <div style="colorref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#000000;">“Mother is always here amongst us to help us and guide us.”p6</divref>
<div style="color:#000000;"center>Most of the children will understand, and some are capable of feeling.~</divcenter>
It is not necessary [in a calm mind] that there should be no thought. When there is no thought, it is silence. But the mind is said to be calm when thoughts, feelings, etc. may pass through it, but it is not disturbed. It feels that the thoughts are not its own; it observes them perhaps; but it is not perturbed by anything. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwmcwsa/1229/mothersquiet-action-in-a-class-of-children-aged-seven-toand-ninecalm#p8p58</ref>
<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"center>If you want my help, it is not by accepting one principle of action and rejecting another that you can have it, but by concentrating before the class, by establishing silence and peace in your heart (and in your head too, if possible) and by calling my presence with a sincere aspiration that I should be behind all your actions, not in the way you think that I would act (for that can only be an arbitrary opinion and therefore necessarily wrong), but in ~</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">silence</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">and calm and inner spontaneity. This is the only true way of getting out of your difficulty.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mothers-action-in-a-class-of-children-aged-seven-to-nine#p24</ref></spancenter>