Revision as of 16:57, 14 August 2018

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What is Silence ?

Silence: the condition of the being when it listens to the Divine.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p27

Silence is the absence of all motion of thought or other vibration of activity.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p13

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/purification-intelligence-and-will#p12

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.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p18

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.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/reality-and-the-cosmic-illusion#p24

Importance of Silence

The quietude and silence which you feel and the sense of happiness in it are indeed the very basis of successful sadhana.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/peace#p4

I said once that, to speak usefully for ten minutes, you should remain silent for ten days. I could add that, to act usefully for one day, you should keep quiet for a year! Of course, I am not speaking of the ordinary day-to-day acts that are needed for the common external life, but of those who have or believe that they have something to do for the world. And the silence I speak of is the inner quietude that those alone have who can act without being identified with their action, merged into it and blinded and deafened by the noise and form of their own movement. (The Mother, 26 May 1929)

http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/26-may-1929#p30

But even before reaching this point, silence in itself is supremely useful, because in most people who have a somewhat developed and active mind, the mind is never at rest. During the day, its activity is kept under a certain control, but at night, during the sleep of the body, the control of the waking state is almost completely removed and the mind indulges in activities which are sometimes excessive and often incoherent. This creates a great stress which leads to fatigue and the diminution of the intellectual faculties.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mental-education#p20

But for the knowledge of the Self it is necessary to have the power of a complete intellectual passivity, the power of dismissing all thought, the power of the mind to think not at all which the Gita in one passage enjoins. This is a hard saying for the occidental mind to which thought is the highest thing and which will be apt to mistake the power of the mind not to think, its complete silence for the incapacity of thought. But this power of silence is a capacity and not an incapacity, a power and not a weakness. It is a profound and pregnant stillness. Only when the mind is thus entirely still, like clear, motionless and level water, in a perfect purity and peace of the whole being and the soul transcends thought, can the Self which exceeds and originates all activities and becomings, the Silence from which all words are born, the Absolute of which all relativities are partial reflections manifest itself in the pure essence of our being. In a complete silence only is the Silence heard; in a pure peace only is its Being revealed. Therefore to us the name of That is the Silence and the Peace.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-purified-understanding#p18

Philosophy knows nothing about peace and silence or the inner and outer vital. These things are discovered only by Yoga.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-intellect-and-yoga#p2

But Yoga is not a mental field, the consciousness which has to be established is not a mental, logical or debating consciousness—it is even laid down by Yoga that unless and until the mind is stilled, including the intellectual or logical mind, and opens itself in quietude or silence to a higher and deeper consciousness, vision and knowledge, sadhana cannot reach its goal.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/doubt-and-faith#p1

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-force-in-work#p7

Obviously to live in the silent Brahman, the best way is to live within where one can have the silence and resist all outward pulls.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p57

In silence lies the source of the highest inspirations.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/letters-to-a-young-sadhak-xii#p8

Silence: the ideal condition for progress.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p1

Integral silence: the source of true force.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/strength-force-and-power#p4

In silence lies the greatest devotion.

(The Mother, 6 April 1972)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/6-april-1972#p1

It is in silence that the soul best expresses itself.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p22In the silence of our heart there is always peace and joy.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p8In a quiet silence strength is restored.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p10

In peace and silence the Eternal manifests. Let nothing trouble you and the Eternal will manifest.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/peace#p19

To take this step towards the new creation, one must learn to silence the mind and rise above into Consciousness. (The Mother, 2 April 1972)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/2-april-1972#p1

Silence in the vital: a powerful help for inner peace.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-vital#p26

It all depends on the quality of the silence—if it is a luminous silence, full of force and conscious concentration, it is good. If it is a tamasic and unconscious silence, it is harmful.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/10-june-1963#p3

It is out of this Silence that the Word which creates the worlds for ever proceeds; for the Word expresses that which is self-hidden in the Silence.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/reality-omnipresent#p4

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p76

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p82

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p25

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/letters-to-a-young-sadhak-iii#p12All 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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p79

Fear of Silence

I have seen many cases in which Sri Aurobindo had given silence to somebody, had made his mind silent, and that person came back to him in a kind of despair, saying: "But I have become stupid!" For his thought was no longer excited.

(Sri Aurobindo, 30 January 1957)

http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/30-january-1957#p19 [1]A silence, an entry into a wide or even immense or infinite emptiness is part of the inner spiritual experience; of this silence and void the physical mind has a certain fear, the small superficially active thinking or vital mind a shrinking from it or dislike,—for it confuses the silence with mental and vital incapacity and the void with cessation or non-existence: but this silence is the silence of the spirit which is the condition of a greater knowledge, power and bliss, and this emptiness is the emptying of the cup of our natural being, a liberation of it from its turbid contents so that it may be filled with the wine of God; it is the passage not into non-existence but to a greater existence.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-divine-life#p16

Effects of Silence

General effects

Besides, for inner growth, I do not believe that words are necessary. In silence all our help is there at its most powerful.

(The Mother, 6 September 1939)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/6-september-1939#p3Already someone has told me, quite rightly, that while practising this half-silence, or at any rate this continence of speech, one achieves quite naturally the mastery of numerous difficulties in one's character and also one avoids a great many frictions and misunderstandings. This is true.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/impurity#p27

It must have been the descent of the higher silence, the silence of the Self or Atman. In this silence one perceives, but the mind is not active,—things are sensed, but without any responsive connection or vibration. The silent Self is there as a separate reality, not bound or involved in the activity of Nature, aloof, detached and self-existent. Even if thoughts come across this silence, they do not disturb it; the Self is separate from the thinking mind also. In this connection the feeling "I think" is a survival from the old consciousness; in the full silence what one feels is "thought occurs in me"—the identification with thoughts as well as with the perception of objects ceases.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-descent-of-the-higher-powers#p26

This simply means that one suddenly comes under the influence of a higher force of which one is not conscious; one is conscious only of the effect, but not of the cause. That's all. It's nothing more than that. If you were conscious you would know what makes you silent, what makes you meditate, what kind of force has entered into you or acts upon you or influences you and puts you in the silence. But as you are not conscious, you are aware only of the effect, the result, that is, the silence that comes into you.

(The Mother, 24 August 1955)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/24-august-1955#p48

Or else, one may have an experience which is almost its very opposite but which comes to the same thing. Suddenly one plunges into a depth, one moves away from the thing one perceived, it seems distant, superficial, unimportant; one enters an inner silence or an inner calm or an inward vision of things, a profound feeling, a more intimate perception of circumstances and things, in which all values change. And one becomes aware of a sort of unity, a deep identity which is one in spite of the diverse appearances. (The Mother, 26 December 1956)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/26-december-1956#p19

When one has learned to silence the mind at will and to concentrate it in receptive silence, then there will be no problem that cannot be solved, no mental difficulty whose solution cannot be found. When it is agitated, thought becomes confused and impotent; in an attentive tranquillity, the light can manifest itself and open up new horizons to man's capacity.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mental-education#p22

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/three-experiences-of-the-inner-being#p4

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/experiences-of-the-self-the-one-and-the-infinite#p7

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-psychic-being#p18

It is in the silence of a peaceful mind that one can best commune with Nature. (The Mother, 13 November 1969)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/13-november-1969#p1

When one begins to feel the inner being and live in it (the result of the experience of peace and silence) the ordinary time sense disappears or becomes purely external.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/science-and-yoga#p56

If you, in your consciousness, reach a state of silence, you perceive your state of silence everywhere, but others don't necessarily perceive it. You perceive it because you are in that state.

(The Mother, 24 August 1955)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/24-august-1955#p42

There is another phenomenon which is considered spiritual, but which is spiritual only indirectly: it is when you find yourself near someone who has controlled his thought and achieved mental silence. You suddenly feel this silence coming down into yourself and something which was impossible for you half an hour earlier suddenly becomes a reality. This is a rather unusual phenomenon.

(The Mother, 22 January 1951)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/22-january-1951#p16

Ascent and Descent

There are two movements that are necessary—one is the ascent through the increasing of peace and silence to its source above the mind,—that is indicated by the tendency of the consciousness to rise out of the body to the top of the head and above where it is easy to realise the Self in all its stillness and liberation and wideness and to open to the other powers of the Higher Consciousness. The other is the descent of the peace, silence, the spiritual freedom and wideness and the powers of the higher consciousness as they develop into the lower down to the most physical and even the subconscient. To both of these movements there can be a block—a block above due to the mind and lower nature being unhabituated (it is that really and not incapacity) and a block below due to the physical consciousness and its natural slowness to change. Everybody has these blocks but by persistent will, aspiration or abhyāsa they can be overcome.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/ascent-and-descent#p16

I have said that the most decisive way for the Peace or the Silence to come is by a descent from above. In fact, in reality though not always in appearance, that is how they always come;—not in appearance always, because the sadhak is not always conscious of the process; he feels the peace settling in him or at least manifesting, but he has not been conscious how and whence it came. Yet it is the truth that all that belongs to the higher consciousness comes from above, not only the spiritual peace and silence, but the Light, the Power, the Knowledge, the higher seeing and thought, the Ananda come from above.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-psychic-and-spiritual-realisations#p18

You must dismiss the fear of the concentration. The emptiness you feel coming on you is the silence of the great peace in which you become aware of your self, not as the small ego shut up in the body, but as the spiritual self wide as the universe. Consciousness is not dissolved; it is the limits of the consciousness that are dissolved. In that silence thoughts may cease for a time, there may be nothing but a great limitless freedom and wideness, but into that silence, that empty wideness descends the vast peace from above, light, bliss, knowledge, the higher Consciousness in which you feel the oneness of the Divine. It is the beginning of the transformation and there is nothing in it to fear.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-universal-or-cosmic-consciousness#p37

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/descent-and-the-lower-nature#p14

If your consciousness rises above the head, that means that it goes beyond the ordinary mind to the centre above which receives the higher consciousness or else towards the ascending levels of the higher consciousness itself. The first result is the silence and peace of the Self which is the basis of the higher consciousness; this may afterwards descend into the lower levels, into the very body.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/ascent-and-descent#p9

Thinking in Silence

Those who are at the bottom of the scale, who have never trained their minds, find it necessary to speak in order to think. It happens even that it is the sound of their voice which enables them to associate ideas; if they do not express them, they do not think. At a higher level there are those who still have to move words about in their heads in order to think, even though they do not utter them aloud. Those who truly begin to think are those who are able to think without words, that is to say, to be in contact with the idea and express it through a wide variety of words and phrases. There are higher degrees—many higher degrees—but those who think without words truly begin to reach an intellectual state and for them it is much easier to make the mind quiet, that is to say, to stop the movement of associating the words that constantly move about like passers-by in a public square, and to contemplate an idea in silence.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/conjugate-verses#p89In 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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p6

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p58

Silence in the Physical

What is meant by the "silence of the physical consciousness" and how can one remain in this silence?

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.

(The Mother, 15 October 1959)

http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/15-october-1959#p2

If the peace and silence continue to come down, they usually become so intense as to seize the physical mind also after a time.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/concentration-and-meditation#p79

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/difficulties-of-the-physical-nature#p28

If the physical being has felt and assimilated the silence and peace, then inertia ought not to rise up.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/difficulties-of-the-physical-nature#p29

Certainly, peace, purity and silence can be felt in all material things—for the Divine Self is there in all.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/peace#p27

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-subconscient-and-the-integral-yoga#p49

Silence, Sleep and Sachidananda

Generally, when you have what you call dreamless sleep, it is one of two things; either you do not remember what you dreamt or you fell into absolute unconsciousness which is almost death—a taste of death. But there is the possibility of a sleep in which you enter into an absolute silence, immobility and peace in all parts of your being and your consciousness merges into Sachchidananda. You can hardly call it sleep, for it is extremely conscious. In that condition you may remain for a few minutes, but these few minutes give you more rest and refreshment than hours of ordinary sleep. You cannot have it by chance; it requires a long training.

(The Mother, 21 April 1929)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/21-april-1929#p11

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/sleep#p50

Silence, Activity and Action

General

It is only in silence that anything great can be done.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/india#p59

For the action is based on the silence and by the silence it is free.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/christianity-and-theosophy#p16

In silence lies the greatest receptivity. And in an immobile silence the vastest action is done.

(The Mother, 19 December 1971)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/19-december-1971#p1

In the silence of the heart, you will receive the command.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p7

To know how to observe in silence is the source of skillfulness.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/progress-and-perfection-in-work#p63

In concentration and silence we must gather strength for the right action.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p16

It is not possible for the spontaneous silent condition to last always at once, but that is what must grow in one till there is a constant inner silence—a silence which cannot be disturbed by any outward activity or even by any attempt at attack or disturbance.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p24

But there can be an action in the Silence, undisturbed even as the universal action goes on in the cosmic Silence.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p31

Whatever has been done in the world has been done by the very few who can stand outside the action in silence; for it is they who are the instruments of the Divine Power. They are dynamic agents, conscious instruments; they bring down the forces that change the world. Things can be done in that way, not by a restless activity. In peace, in silence and in quietness the world was built; and each time that something is to be truly built, it is in peace and silence and quietness that it must be done. It is ignorance to believe that you must run from morning to night and labour at all sorts of futile things in order to do something for the world.

The Mother, 26 May 1929)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/26-may-1929#p28

It is in the silence of the mind that the strongest and freest action can come, e.g. the writing of a book, poetry, inspired speech etc. When the mind is active it interferes with the inspiration, puts in its own small ideas which get mixed up with the inspiration or starts something from a lower level or simply stops the inspiration altogether by bubbling up with all sorts of mere mental suggestions. So also intuitions or action etc. can come more easily when the ordinary inferior movement of the mind is not there. It is also in the silence of the mind that it is easiest for knowledge to come from within or above, from the psychic or from the higher consciousness.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/thought-and-knowledge#p65

Ah! From the practical point of view, you must be in a state of inner silence, with a mental activity exclusively occupied with forming the thing you want to do, the progress you want to accomplish, that is to say, the mental construction you need for your work. And your capacity for observation—it is infinitely preferable, I could say absolutely indispensable, to use it to observe your field of action, the processes you employ for your action, the results obtained, the principle you can arrive at from the experience, the knowledge you can obtain, indeed, all these things... but not to turn back on yourself and look at yourself acting.

(The Mother, 19 January 1955)

http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/19-january-1955#p26

For me, for what I am trying to do, action in silence is always much more important.... The force which is at work is not limited by words, and this gives it an infinitely greater strength, and it expresses itself in each consciousness in accordance with its own particular mode, which makes it infinitely more effective. A certain vibration is given out in silence, with a special purpose, to obtain a definite result, but according to the mental receptivity of each person it is expressed in each individual consciousness exactly in the form which can be the most effective, the most active, the most immediately useful for each individual; while if it is formulated in words, this formula has to be received by each person in its fixity—the fixity of the words given to it—and it loses much of its strength and fullness of action because, first, the words are not always understood as they are said and then they are not always adapted to the understanding of each one.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/5-june-1957#p11

The dynamic action when it comes acts without disturbing the silence and peace. There is the vast peace and silence and in that the Force or the Will works to do what is necessary—in that also is the action of Agni or the psychic.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-force-in-work#p20

We have said that there is only one safety, never to act except in harmony with the divine Will. There is one question: how to know that it is the divine Will which makes you act? I replied to the person who put to me this question (although this person did not agree with me) that it is not difficult to distinguish the voice of the Divine: one cannot make a mistake. You need not be very far on the path to be able to recognise it; you must listen to the still, small peaceful voice which speaks in the silence of your heart. (The Mother, 8 February 1951)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/8-february-1951#p17

The Gita promises us freedom for the spirit even in the midst of works and the full energies of Nature, if we accept subjection of our whole being to that which is higher than the separating and limiting ego. It proposes an integral dynamic activity founded on a still passivity; a largest possible action irrevocably based on an immobile calm is its secret,—free expression out of a supreme inward silence.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/self-surrender-in-works-the-way-of-the-gita#p11

The Supreme pours Himself out of an eternal peace, poise and silence into an eternal activity, free and infinite, freely fixing for itself its self-determinations, using infinite quality to shape out of it varied combination of quality. We have to go back to that peace, poise and silence and act out of it with the divine freedom from the bondage of qualities but still using qualities even the most opposite largely and flexibly for the divine work in the world.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-modes-of-the-self#p11

It is possible only when one has had the experience of complete silence in the mental region and when the spiritual force with its light and power descends through the mind and makes it act directly without its following its usual method of analysis, deduction, reasoning. All these faculties which are usually considered the normal activities of the mind, must be stopped, and yet the spiritual Light, Knowledge and Power must be able to transform them into a channel of direct expression, without using these means to express themselves.

(The Mother, 17 September 1958)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/17-september-1958#p8

All speech and action comes prepared out of the eternal Silence.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-277-278#p1

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.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/reality-omnipresent#p14

Working in Silence

Work is always best done in silence except so far as it is necessary to speak for the work itself. Conversation is best kept for leisure hours. So nobody should object to your silence during work.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/interactions-with-others-and-the-practice-of-yoga#p53

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.

One can do everything while keeping the mind quiet, and what one does is better done.

(The Mother, 7 December 1966)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/7-december-1966#p7

What has to happen is that this inner consciousness should be always there not troubled by any disturbance with the constant silence, inner happiness, calm quietude, etc., while the outer consciousness does what is necessary in the way of work etc. or, what is better, has that done through it—it is the latter experience that you have some days as someone pushing the work with so much continuous force without your feeling tired.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p74

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-lower-vital-being#p36As 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 material!http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-supermind-or-supramental#p45

Receptivity in Silence

In silence lies the greatest receptivity. And in an immobile silence the vastest action is done.

(The Mother, 19 December 1971)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/19-december-1971#p1

What you mean but don't say... it's those who go beyond thought, silence their thoughts, those who have an absolutely silent and immobile mind, who open to inner regions and write almost automatically what comes to them from above. That's what you meant but didn't say. But that's quite a different thing, and it happens once in a thousand years. It's not a frequent phenomenon. First of all one must be a yogi to be able to do all that. But an inspired poet, as we call him... that's something absolutely different. All men of some genius, that is, those who have an opening upon a world slightly higher than the ordinary mind, are called "inspired". One who makes some discoveries is also inspired. Each time one is in contact with something a little higher than the ordinary human field, one is inspired. So when one is not altogether limited by the ordinary consciousness one receives inspirations from above; the source of his production is higher than the ordinary mental consciousness.

(The Mother, 24 August 1955)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/24-august-1955#p37

(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?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.

(The Mother, 5 June 1957)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/5-june-1957#p19It is a discipline to be followed. For a long time one may try and not succeed, but as soon as one succeeds in making a "mirror", still and attentive, one always obtains a result, not necessarily with a precise form of thought but always with the sensations of a light coming from above. And then, if one can receive this light coming from above without entering immediately into a whirl of activity, receive it in calm and silence and let it penetrate deep into the being, then after a while it expresses itself either as a luminous thought or as a very precise indication here (Mother indicates the heart), in this other centre.

(The Mother, 23 July 1958)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/23-july-1958#p10

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/emptiness-voidness-blankness-and-silence#p37

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-77-78#p20

It is an admirable state; it is perfect peace of mind. There is no longer any need to accumulate acquired knowledge, received ideas which have to be memorised; it is no longer necessary to clutter one's brain with thousands and thousands of things in order to have at one's command, when the time comes, the knowledge that is needed to perform an action, to impart a teaching, to solve a problem. The mind is silent, the brain is still, everything is clear, quiet, calm; and at the right moment, by divine Grace a drop of light falls into the consciousness and what needs to be known is known. Why should one care to remember—why try to retain that knowledge? On the day or at the moment that it is needed one will have it again. At each second one is a blank page on which what must be known will be inscribed—in the peace, the repose, the silence of a perfect receptivity.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-4#p4Silence and a modest, humble, attentive receptivity; no concern for appearances or even any anxiety to be—one is quite modestly, quite humbly, quite simply the instrument which of itself is nothing and knows nothing, but is ready to receive everything and transmit everything.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-4#p6

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.

(The Mother, 29 August 1956)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/29-august-1956#p4And if one carries this a little further, one should never think and plan beforehand what one ought to say or write. One should simply be able to silence one's mind, to turn it like a receptacle towards the higher Consciousness and express as it receives it, in mental silence, what comes from above. That would be true spontaneity.

(The Mother, 29 August 1956)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/29-august-1956#p7

At first it might seem the straight and right way to silence the mind altogether, to silence the intellect, the mental and personal will, the desire mind and the mind of emotion and sensation, and to allow in that perfect silence the Self, the Spirit, the Divine to disclose himself and leave him to illuminate the being by the supramental light and power and Ananda. And this is indeed a great and powerful discipline. It is the calm and still mind much more readily and with a much greater purity than the mind in agitation and action that opens to the Infinite, reflects the Spirit, becomes full of the Self and awaits like a consecrated and purified temple the unveiling of the Lord of all our being and nature. It is true also that the freedom of this silence gives a possibility of a larger play of the intuitive being and admits with less obstruction and turmoil of mental groping and seizing the great intuitions, inspirations, revelations which emerge from within or descend from above. It is therefore an immense gain if we can acquire the capacity of always being able at will to command an absolute tranquillity and silence of the mind free from any necessity of mental thought or movement and disturbance and, based in that silence, allow thought and will and feeling to happen in us only when the Shakti wills it and when it is needful for the divine purpose.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-intuitive-mind#p5

Descents of peace are good, but an increasingly stable quietude and silence of the mind is something more valuable. When that is there then other things can come—usually one at a time, light or strength and force or knowledge or ananda. http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p75

Supreme Lord, teach us to be silent so that in silence we may receive Thy force and understand Thy will.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/prayers#p105

Knowing in Silence

Certain silences are revelations and are more expressive than words.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p18

With words one can at times understand, but only in silence one knows.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p26

It is obviously in the silence of the mind that it is possible to perceive the Divine Command. The true way of knowing is above words and thoughts.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-262-263-264#p6

It is only in perfect quietness and silence, free from all prejudices and preferences, that the consciousness can perceive the truth.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/work-and-teaching-1#p28

It is necessary in order to develop a deeper consciousness and outlook on things that understands in silence the movements of Nature in oneself and others and is not moved or disturbed or superficially interested and drawn into an external movement.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p45

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/memory-self-consciousness-and-the-ignorance#p5

"In Silence is wisdom"—it is in the inner silence of the mind that true knowledge can come; for the ordinary activity of the mind only creates surface ideas and representations which are not true knowledge. Speech is usually only the expression of the superficial nature—therefore to throw oneself out too much in such speech wastes the energy and prevents the inward listening which brings the word of true knowledge.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p9

For a knowledge from above begins to descend, frequently, constantly, then uninterruptedly, and to manifest in the mind's quietude or silence; intuitions and inspirations, revelations born of a greater sight, a higher truth and wisdom, enter into the being, a luminous intuitive discrimination works which dispels all darkness of understanding or dazzling confusions, puts all in order; a new consciousness begins to form.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-triple-transformation#p26

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.

(The Mother, 23 June 1929)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/23-june-1929#p9

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)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/30-september-1953#p6If 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.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-160-161#p5

Naturally, all these discussions (or exchanges of opinion) are purely mental and have no value from the viewpoint of the Truth. Each mind has its way of seeing and understanding things, and even if you could unite and bring together all these ways of seeing, you would still be very far from attaining the Truth. It is only when, in the silence of the mind, you can lift yourself above thought, that you are ready to know by identity.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/opinion-and-truth#p5

Truth is above mind; it is in silence that one can enter into communication with it.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/truth-is-above-mind#p21

Reading in Silence

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-2#p19

In any case, I advise always to read a little at a time, keeping the mind as tranquil as one can, without making an effort to understand, but keeping the head as silent as possible, and letting the force contained in what one reads enter deep within. This force received in the calm and the silence will do its work of light and, if needed, will create in the brain the necessary cells for the understanding. Thus, when one re-reads the same thing some months later, one perceives that the thought expressed has become much more clear and close, and even sometimes altogether familiar.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/study-of-works-of-sri-aurobindo-and-the-mother#p4Take one of Sri Aurobindo's books. Read a sentence or two. Then remain silent and concentrated to understand the deeper meaning. Try to concentrate deeply enough to obtain mental silence and begin again daily until you obtain a result.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/study-of-works-of-sri-aurobindo-and-the-mother#p29

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!http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/reading#p31

Listening to music in Silence

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.

(The Mother, 25 July 1956)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/25-july-1956#p12

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p81In 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.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p84

Fighting in Silence

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-272-273#p3

Food

All quarrels in the place where food is prepared make food indigestible. The cooking must be done in silence and harmony.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/cooking-and-eating#p17

It is much better to eat the meal in silence or at any rate in quietness.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/food#p9

Art

If by Yoga you are capable of reaching this source of all art, then you are master, if you will, of all the arts. Those that may have gone there before, found it perhaps happier, more pleasant or full of a rapturous ease to remain and enjoy the Beauty and the Delight that are there, not manifesting it, not embodying it upon earth. But this abstention is not all the truth nor the true truth of Yoga; it is rather a deformation, a diminution of the dynamic freedom of Yoga by the more negative spirit of Sannyasa. The will of the Divine is to manifest, not to remain altogether withdrawn in inactivity and an absolute silence; if the Divine Consciousness were really an inaction of unmanifesting bliss, there would never have been any creation.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-july-1929#p25

Understanding a teaching in silence

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.

(The Mother, 25 July 1956)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/25-july-1956#p14

Silent Listening

"We say something that is quite clear, but the way in which it is understood is stupefying! Each sees in it something else than what was intended or even puts into it something that is quite the contrary of its sense. If you want to understand truly and avoid this kind of error, you must go behind the sound and the movement of the words and learn to listen in silence."

(The Mother, 12 March 1951)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/12-march-1951#p9It is a matter of attention. If you concentrate your attention on what is being said, with the will to understand it correctly, the silence is created spontaneously—it is attention that creates the silence.

(The Mother, 12 March 1951)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/12-march-1951#p12

All the other senses undergo a similar transformation. All that the ear listens to, reveals the totality of its sound body and sound significance and all the tones of its vibration and reveals also to the single and complete hearing the quality, the rhythmic energy, the soul of the sound and its expression of the one universal spirit. There is the same internality, the going of the sense into the depths of the sound and the finding there of that which informs it and extends it into unity with the harmony of all sound and no less with the harmony of all silence, so that the ear is always listening to the infinite in its heard expression and the voice of its silence.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-supramental-sense#p12

Disturbance of Silence

This is true, altogether true, it is at the moment when all is silenced in order that man may become conscious of his origin that he, in his folly, in order to distract himself conceives or carries out the worst stupidities.

(The Mother, 12 March 1951)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/12-march-1951#p48

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.

(The Mother, 26 January 1955)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/26-january-1955#p13

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.

(The Mother, 5 February 1951)

http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/5-february-1951#p12

Man is the first animal on earth to be able to use articulate sounds. Indeed, he is very proud of this capacity and exercises it without moderation or discernment. The world is deafened with the sound of his words and sometimes one almost misses the harmonious silence of the plant kingdom.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-four-austerities-and-the-four-liberations#p34

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-mind#p48

Silence in the Supermental boat

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)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/19-february-1958#p32

Practices of Silence

Silence... Oh! It is better to practise it than to talk about it.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-111-112#p4

General practices

Practise silence of mind, it gives power of understanding.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-mind#p85Wait quietly for the exact indication; all mental intervention and decisions are arbitrary. The clear indication comes in the silence of the mind.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-mind#p89It is only in mental silence that you can hear the voice without distorting it—be very peaceful.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-mind#p92

It is in quietness, peace and silence that the spiritual forces act.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/quiet#p26

A respectful and modest silence is the only attitude befitting a disciple.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/control-of-speech#p39

They [small Buddhist sects} sit down for a few hours in the day and even at night and quiet their mind. This is for them the key to all realisation—a quiet mind that knows how to keep quiet for hours together without roving. You must not believe however that it is a very easy thing to do, but they have no other object. They do not concentrate upon any thought, they do not try to understand better, to know more, nothing of the kind; for them the only way is to have a quiet mind and sometimes they pass through years and years of effort before they arrive at this result—to silence the mind, to keep it absolutely silent and still; for, as it is said here in the Dhammapada, if the mind is unbalanced, then this constant movement of ideas following one another, sometimes without any order, ideas contradicting and opposing each other, ideas that speculate on things, all that jostles about in the head, makes holes in the roof, as it were. So through these holes all undesirable movements enter into the consciousness, as water enters into a house with a leaky roof.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/conjugate-verses#p87

This work of mental purification should be done very regularly in order to secure a complete control over one’s actions.

For this purpose, it is good to set apart some time every day when one can quietly go over one's thoughts and put one's synthesis in order. Once the habit is acquired, you can maintain control over your thoughts even during work and action, allowing only those which are useful for what you are doing to come to the surface. Particularly, if you have continued to cultivate the power of concentration and attention, only the thoughts that are needed will be allowed to enter the active external consciousness and they then become all the more dynamic and effective. And if, in the intensity of concentration, it becomes necessary not to think at all, all mental vibration can be stilled and an almost total silence secured. In this silence one can gradually open to the higher regions of the mind and learn to record the inspirations that come from there.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mental-education#p19

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/concentration-and-meditation#p24

It is quite certain that to create absolute silence is of all things the most difficult, for many things of which one was not aware, become enormous! There were all kinds of suggestion, movements, thoughts, formations which went on as though automatically in the outer consciousness, almost outside the consciousness, on the frontiers of consciousness; and as soon as one wants to be absolutely silent, one becomes aware of all these things which go on moving, moving, moving and make a lot of noise and prevent you from being silent. That is why it is better to remain very quiet, very calm and at the same time very attentive to something which is above you and to which you aspire, and if there is this kind of noise passing like that around you (Mother moves her hands around her head), not to pay attention, not to look, not to heed it. If there are thoughts which go round and round and round like this (gestures), which come and go, do not look, do not pay attention, but concentrate upwards in a great aspiration which one may even formulate—because often it helps the concentration—towards the light, the peace, the quietude, towards a kind of inner impassiveness, so that the concentration may be strong enough for you not to attend to all that continues to whirl about all around. But if suddenly you say, "Ah, there's some noise! Oh, here is a thought!", then it is finished. You will never succeed in being quiet. Have you never seen those people who try to stop a quarrel by shouting still louder than the ones who are quarrelling? Well, it is something like that. (Mother laughs.)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/8-september-1954#p32

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. 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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/interactions-with-others-and-the-practice-of-yoga#p100

First condition, know how to keep silent. And not only keep your tongue quiet, but silence your mind, keep the head silent. If you wish to have a true, sincere experience upon which you can build, you must know how to be silent, otherwise you have nothing but what you fabricate yourself, which is equivalent to zero. All that one can say is, "Heavens, what a fashioner my mind is!" (The Mother, 19 March 1951)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/19-march-1951#p34

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 get an inner quietude and a mastery over the outer movements which will resist any atmosphere.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p74

The difficulty is that the things in the atmosphere come in even if one does not speak with people. There are always mind waves moving about. It is a mastery that has to be developed, beginning with a power of silence, exclusion, non-response.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p75

The mind must learn to be silent—remain calm, attentive, without making a noise. If you try to silence your mind directly, it is a hard job, almost impossible; for the most material part of the mind never stops its activity—it goes on and on like a non-stop recording machine. It repeats all that it records and unless there is a switch to stop it, it continues and continues indefinitely. If, on the other hand, you manage to shift your consciousness into a higher domain, above the ordinary mind, this opening to the Light calms the mind, it does not stir any longer, and the mental silence so obtained can become constant. Once you enter into this domain, you may very well never come out of it—the external mind always remains calm.

(The Mother, 8 March 1951)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/8-march-1951#p4

The silence in the head and heart and the emptiness are both necessary 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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/experiences-of-the-self-the-one-and-the-infinite#p25

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 not, for instance, only by an effort of the mind itself to get clear of all intrusive emotion or passion, to quiet its own characteristic vibrations, to resist the obscuring fumes of a physical inertia which brings about a sleep or a torpor of the mind instead of its wakeful silence, that the thing can be done. This is indeed an ordinary process of the Yogic path of knowledge; but the same end can be brought about or automatically happen by other processes—for instance, by the descent from above of a great spiritual stillness imposing silence on the mind and heart, on the life stimuli, on the physical reflexes. A sudden descent of this kind or a series of descents accumulative in force and efficacy is a well-known phenomenon of spiritual experience. Or again one may start a mental process of one kind or another for the purpose which would normally mean a long labour and yet may pull down or be seized midway, or even at the outset, by an overmind influx, a rapid intervention or manifestation of the higher Silence, with an effect sudden, instantaneous, out of all proportion to the means used at the beginning. 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. It was in this last way that I myself came by the mind's absolute silence, unimaginable to me before I had the actual experience.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/philosophical-thought-and-yoga#p19

Ah! First you must will it, 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!

(The Mother, 19 May 1954)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/19-may-1954#p45

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-462-463#p3The cure is not in trying to wake up the mind but in turning it, immobile and silent, upward towards the region of intuitive light, in a steady and quiet aspiration, and to wait in silence, for the light to come down and flood your brain which will, little by little, wake up to this influence and become capable of receiving and expressing the intuition.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/study#p88

Sri Aurobindo’s Silence

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/thought-and-knowledge#p9

Meditating in Silence

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.

(The Mother, 13 May 1953)

http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/13-may-1953#p5

That is, instead of being in a state of tension, instead of making a tremendous effort to silence the inner machine and be able to concentrate your thought upon what you want, when you do it quite simply, naturally, without effort, automatically, and you decide to meditate for some reason or other, what you want to see, learn or know remains in your consciousness and all the rest disappears as by a miracle; everything falls quiet in you, all your being becomes silent, your nerves are altogether soothed, your consciousness is wholly concentrated—naturally, spontaneously—and you enter with an intense delight into a yet more intense contemplation.

(The Mother, 17 February 1951)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/17-february-1951#p36

Silence and Progress

Silence: the ideal condition for progress.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p1It 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.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p3

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)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/2-november-1970#p1

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

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-ascent-towards-supermind#p26

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)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/11-november-1967#p159

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)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/20-october-1954#p71

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/peace#p7

Connecting to Divine

It is in the silence of complete identification with the Divine that true understanding is obtained.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p24

In peace and inner silence you will more and more become conscious of the constant Presence.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/peace#p18

None can say to the Divine, "I have known Thee", and yet all carry Him in themselves, and in the silence of their soul can hear the echo of the Divine's voice.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/relationship-with-the-divine#p6

In the perfect silence of the contemplation all widens to infinity, and in the perfect peace of that silence the Divine appears in the resplendent glory of His light.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p14

Feeling alone in the midst of human beings is the sign that you are beginning to feel the need to find in your own being contact with the Divine Presence. So you must concentrate in silence and try to enter deep within to discover the Divine Presence in the depths of your consciousness, beyond all mental activity.

(The Mother, 16 December 1971)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/16-december-1971#p1

Surrender in Silence

Above all words, above all thoughts in the luminous silence of an aspiring faith give yourself totally, unreservedly, absolutely to the Supreme Lord of all existences and He will do of you what He wants you to be.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/self-giving#p39

Silence all outside noise, aspire for the Divine's help; open integrally to it then it comes and surrender to its action, and it will effectively bring about your transformation.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/transformation#p29

Silent Aspiration

In silence, the consciousness grows. It aspires to know You more and more perfectly.

(The Mother, 3 April 1972)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/3-april-1972#p1

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 Mother, 23 June, 1929)

http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/23-june-1929#p21

An aspiration for all that is essentially true, real, perfect. And this aspiration must be free from words, simply a silent attitude, but extremely intense and unvacillating. Not a word must be allowed the right to enter there and disturb it. It must be like a column of vibrations of aspiration, which nothing can touch—and in total silence—and therein, if something comes down, what descends (and will be clothed in words in your mind and in sounds in your mouth) will be the Word. But nothing less than this will do.

(The Mother, 7 April 1954)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/7-april-1954#p32

How can one silence the mind, remain quiet, and at the same time have an aspiration, an intensity or a widening? Because as soon as one aspires, isn't it the mind that aspires?

No; aspiration, as well as widening and intensity, comes from the heart, the emotional centre, the door of the psychic or rather the door leading to the psychic.

The mind by its nature is curious and interested; it sees, it observes, it tries to understand and explain; and with all this activity, it disturbs the experience and diminishes its intensity and force.

On the other hand, the more quiet and silent the mind is, the more can aspiration rise up from the depths of the heart in the fullness of its ardour.

(The Mother, 17 September 1959)

http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/17-september-1959#p2

If you can relax and feel at ease, it will be very good; if you can enter into the silence, that will be perfect. Every day we shall begin with the prayer: "Grant that I may become conscious of Your presence"; and together we shall aspire for a moment in the silence and ardour of our aspiration.

(The Mother, 10 March 1972)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/10-march-1972#p3

Establishing Silence

How can we establish a settled peace and silence in the mind?(After a silence) I mean that this exclusiveness is a habit. However, when one has done a little yoga seriously, one knows very well that one can think here (Mother shows the centre of the forehead between the eyebrows, then the right side, then the left) one can think here, one can think here, one can think in front and, as I was saying just now, one can think much higher—up but naturally, one thinks that all thought-phenomena, concentration, are produced in the brain—and when one thinks up above, here (Mother shows the space above the head), one thinks much better than when one thinks here. It is only that one has never tried to do otherwise. Not "never tried", there are quite a number of people who have tried and have succeeded.

(The Mother, 8 September 1954)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/8-september-1954#p55

Only, when there is the peace and the mental silence, the vital mind tries to rush in and occupy the place or else the mechanical mind tries to raise up for the same purpose its round of trivial habitual thoughts. What the sadhaka has to do is to be careful to reject and hush these outsiders, so that during the meditation at least the peace and quietude of the mind and vital may be complete. This can be done best if you keep a strong and silent will. That will is the will of the Purusha behind the mind; when the mind is at peace, when it is silent one can become aware of the Purusha, silent also, separate from the action of the nature.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p15

Silent self-observation

The best is to keep silent and look well at things, and little by little you make notes within yourself and keep the record without pronouncing any judgment. 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 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.

(The Mother, 20 January 1951)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/20-january-1951#p23

Thus a division is created between the mind that thinks and wills and the mind that observes and the Purusha becomes the witness only; he sees, he understands the process and laws of his thought, but detaches himself from it. Then as the master of the sanction he withdraws his past sanction from the tangle of the mental undercurrent and the reasoning intellect and causes both to cease from their importunities. He becomes liberated from subjection to the thinking mind and capable of the utter silence.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-release-from-the-heart-and-the-mind#p9

It is quite possible for thoughts to pass without disturbing the silence—but for that you must be perfectly detached from the thoughts and indifferent to them.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p4

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. Silence is more than quietude; it can be gained by banishing thought altogether from the inner mind keeping it voiceless or quite outside; but more easily it is established by a descent from above—one feels it coming down, entering and occupying, or surrounding the personal consciousness which then tends to merge itself in the vast impersonal silence.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p36

Communicating in Silence

Listen in a total silence of your whole being—mental, vital and physical.

(The Mother, 6 July 1933)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/6-july-1933#p6

We sat together in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the company of our soul, and we witnessed the gates of Eternity opening wide before us.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p20

For it is one of the powers of this inner consciousness to bring about what it sees to be the right thing by simply communicating in entire silence to the consciousness of another. That is the true way of acting—through the power of the inner consciousness, its knowledge, vision and will.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p44

There are some who have the flow of speech by nature and those who are very vital cannot do without it. But the latter case (not being able to do without it) is obviously a disability from the spiritual point of view. There are also certain stages in the sadhana when one has to go inward and silence is at that time very necessary while unnecessary speech becomes a dispersion of the energies or externalises the consciousness. It is especially this chat for chat's sake tendency that has to be overcome.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p8

If you want to be an instrument of the Truth, you must always speak the truth and not falsehood. But this does not mean that you must tell everything to everybody. To conceal the truth by silence or refusal to speak is permissible, because the truth may be misunderstood or misused by those who are not prepared for it or who are opposed to it—it may even be made a starting point for distortion or sheer falsehood. But to speak falsehood is another matter. Even in jest it should be avoided, because it tends to lower the consciousness.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p58

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.

http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p70So long as you have to draw your understanding from the forms of words, you are likely to fall into much confusion about the true sense; but if in a silence of your mind you can rise into the world from which ideas descend to take form, at once the real understanding comes. If you are to be sure of understanding one another, you must be able to understand in silence. There is a condition in which your minds are so well attuned and harmonised together that one perceives the thought of the other without any necessity of words. But if there is not this attunement, there will always be some deformation of your meaning, because to what you speak the other mind supplies its own significance. I use a word in a certain sense or shade of its sense; you are accustomed to put into it another sense or shade. Then, evidently, you will understand, not my exact meaning in it, but what the word means to you. This is true not of speech only, but of reading also. If you want to understand a book with a deep teaching in it, you must be able to read it in the mind's silence; you must wait and let the expression go deep inside you into the region where words are no more and from there come slowly back to your exterior consciousness and its surface understanding. But if you let the words jump at your external mind and try to adapt and adjust the two, you will have entirely missed their real sense and power. There can be no perfect understanding unless you are in union with the unexpressed mind that is behind the centre of expression.

(The Mother, 26 May 1929)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/26-may-1929#p21

It is possible. Perhaps the one who is silent will understand the other who is not!... But when there is this full accord, even if it is not permanent, when you are with someone and follow a thought far enough to come out of the external agitation, if the other too has followed the same thought, you may find yourselves suddenly agreeing without having spoken or made any effort towards that. Generally the silence comes to both at the same time or almost the same time—it is as though you slid into the silence. Of course, it may happen also that one continues to make a noise in his head, while the other has stopped, but the one who has stopped has a much greater chance of understanding what is happening to the other! (The Mother, 19 March 1951)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/19-march-1951#p20

If you are not alone and live with others, cultivate the habit of not externalising yourself constantly by speaking aloud, and you will notice that little by little an inner understanding is established between yourself and others; you will then be able to communicate among yourselves with a minimum of words or even without any words at all. This outer silence is most favourable to inner peace, and with goodwill and a steadfast aspiration, you will be able to create a harmonious atmosphere which is very conducive to progress.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-four-austerities-and-the-four-liberations#p42

Control over what one says is more important than complete silence. The best is to learn to say what is useful in the most exact and true way possible.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/control-of-speech#p1If only people did remain a little quiet before speaking, acting or writing, much trouble could be avoided. So many things are said uselessly, they bring misunderstandings and bad feelings which could have been saved with silence.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/control-of-speech#p6

Concentrating together in Silence

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?http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/community-affairs#p144Concentrating together is indeed a very good thing and helps you to become conscious. But 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.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/community-affairs#p146

Silence in Education

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) http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/4-april-1956#p13

It would be interesting to formulate or to elaborate a new method of teaching for children, to take them very young. It is easy when they are very young. We need people—oh! we would need remarkable teachers—who have, first, an ample enough documentation of what is known so as to be able to answer every question, and at the same time, at least the knowledge, if not the experience—the experience would be better—of the true intuitive intellectual attitude, and—naturally the capacity would be still more preferable—at least the knowledge that the true way of knowing is mental silence, an attentive silence turned towards the truer Consciousness, and the capacity to receive what comes from there. The best would be to have this capacity; at least, it should be explained that it is the true thing—a sort of demonstration—and that it works not only from the point of view of what must be learned, of the whole domain of knowledge, but also of the whole domain of what should be done: the capacity to receive the exact indication of how to do it; and as you go on, it changes into a very clear perception of what must be done, and a precise indication of when it must be done. At least the children, as soon as they have the capacity to think—it starts at the age of seven, but at about fourteen or fifteen it is very clear—the children should be given little indications at the age of seven, a complete explanation at fourteen, of how to do it, and that it is the only way to be in relation with the deeper truth of things, and that all the rest is a more or less clumsy mental approximation to something that can be known directly.

(The Mother, 5 April 1967)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/5-april-1967#p24----------------------

Mother, now there is one question, another important question. You have often told us that it is only in the inner silence that we can find the true answer to a question. What is the best way to make the children discover how this silence is established? Is this how consciousness is substituted for knowledge?You see, in this system of classes where everyone is sitting down, the teacher is there and they have a limited time in which to do the work, it is not possible. It is only if you have absolute freedom that you can establish the silence when you need to be silent. But when all the students are in class and the teacher is in class... when the teacher is establishing the silence in himself, all the students... then it is not possible. He can establish the silence at home, at night, the day before, to prepare himself for the next day, but you cannot... It cannot be an immediate rule. Naturally, when you are at the very top of the scale and you are used to keeping your mind absolutely silent, you cannot help it; but you have not reached that point, none of you. So it is better not to speak about it. So I think that during the... Especially with this system, classes with a fixed time, with a fixed number of students, with a fixed teacher, and a fixed subject... you must be active while you are there.

(The Mother, 11 November 1967)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/11-november-1967#p149Yes, there, the morning work, like the work they do there, "Vers la Perfection"... They can very well do that: remain silent, concentrated for a moment, silence all that, everything that is noisy inside, like that, and wait. In the morning, they can do that. No, I mean, when you have an hour's class, or three-quarters of an hour's class with... all together with the teacher... you have to keep yourselves busy. It would be amusing if for three-quarters of an hour everyone could stay... (laughter).

(The Mother, 11 November 1967)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/11-november-1967#p154One thing could be done once, at least once: you set a subject, like that, from the course of subjects, you set it and tell them, "For a quarter of an hour we shall remain silent, silent; no noise, no one should make any noise. We shall remain silent for a quarter of an hour. For a quarter of an hour try to remain completely silent, still and attentive, and then we shall see in a quarter of an hour what comes out of it." You can reduce it to five minutes to begin with, three minutes, two minutes, it doesn't matter. A quarter of an hour is a lot, but you should do... try that... see. Some of them will start to fidget. Very few children, perhaps, know how to keep still; or else they fall asleep—but it doesn't matter if they fall asleep. You could try that at least once, see what happens: "Let's see! Who will answer my question after ten minutes' silence? And not ten minutes which you will spend trying to get hold of everything you may know mentally about the subject, no, no—ten minutes during which you will be just like this, blank, still, silent, attentive... attentive and silent."

(The Mother, 11 November 1967)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/11-november-1967#p156

A moment of silence 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:

“Mother is always here amongst us to help us and guide us.”

Most of the children will understand, and some are capable of feeling.

http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mothers-action-in-a-class-of-children-aged-seven-to-nine#p8

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 silence and calm and inner spontaneity. This is the only true way of getting out of your difficulty.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mothers-action-in-a-class-of-children-aged-seven-to-nine#p24

A minimum of silence is necessary. I know that the most undisciplined children are usually the most intelligent. But to be tamed they must feel the pressure of an intelligence that is more powerful than their own. And for that, one must be able not to come down to their level, and above all know how to remain unaffected by what they do. In fact, it is a yogic problem.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mothers-action-in-a-class-of-children-aged-ten-to-eleven#p4

It is true that the guru himself is subject to the same rule of silence with regard to what concerns him personally. In Nature everything is in movement; thus, whatever does not move forward is bound to fall back. The guru must progress even as his disciples do, although his progress may not be on the same plane. And for him too, to speak about his experiences is not favourable: the greater part of the dynamic force for progress contained in the experience evaporates if it is put into words. But on the other hand, by explaining his experiences to his disciples, he greatly helps their understanding and consequently their progress. It is for him in his wisdom to know to what extent he can and ought to sacrifice the one to the other. It goes without saying that no boasting or vainglory should enter into his account, for the slightest vanity would make him no longer a guru but an imposter.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-four-austerities-and-the-four-liberations#p60

And if you do not want your body to fail you, avoid wasting your energies in useless agitation. Whatever you do, do it in a quiet and composed poise. In peace and silence is the greatest strength.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/students#p16

Resting 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, because somewhere in its being there is not the assent to or participation in the peace and 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.http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/variations-in-the-intensity-of-experience#p32

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.http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mental-education#p21

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. (The Mother, 31 August 1955)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/31-august-1955#p21

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. (The Mother, 30 January 1939)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/30-january-1939#p8

It is very difficult to put one's mind into repose. The majority of men get up very tired, more tired than when they went to sleep. One must learn how to quieten one's mind, make it completely blank, and then when one wakes up, one feels refreshed. One must relax the whole mind in the pure white silence, then one has the least number of dreams.

(The Mother, 22 April 1953)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/22-april-1953#p5

In any case one thing you can do in all security is, before going to sleep, to concentrate, relax all tension in the physical being, try... that is, in the body try so that the body lies like a soft rag on the bed, that it is no longer something with twitchings and cramps; to relax it completely as though it were a kind of thing like a rag. And then, the vital: to calm it, calm it as much as you can, make it as quiet, as peaceful as possible. And then the mind also—the mind, try to keep it like that, without any activity. You must put upon the brain the force of great peace, great quietude, of silence if possible, and not follow ideas actively, not make any effort, nothing, nothing; you must relax all movement there too, but relax it in a kind of silence and quietude as great as possible. (The Mother, 2 March 1955)http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/2-march-1955#p10

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-<div style="text-align:center;"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Transformation of Shadow</span></div>
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-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"></span>
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+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.21zvk94tyzed Fighting in Silence]</div>
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.y0kvsjj2bh0r Psychic and Aspiration][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.y0kvsjj2bh0r  ][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.y0kvsjj2bh0r 11]</div>
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.1duakphx4m41 Food]</div>
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.eeixgn17qmd5 Humour and Embracing Shadow][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.eeixgn17qmd5  ][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.eeixgn17qmd5 12]</div>
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.kymdhy51k06j Art]</div>
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.3tb47g42deta Aesthetic Sense][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.3tb47g42deta  ][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.3tb47g42deta 12]</div>
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.eb2irw8vcrzk Understanding a teaching in silence]</div>
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.7rnxkkwq2vr6 Equanimity][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.7rnxkkwq2vr6  ][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.7rnxkkwq2vr6 12]</div>
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.z4t86uydac3o Silent Listening]</div>
-[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.iqd2eo40tjks Challenges Faced During the Process][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.iqd2eo40tjks  ][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.iqd2eo40tjks 12]
+[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.8ywjtysqegsz Disturbance of Silence]
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.9ujrl49i55zl Desire][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.9ujrl49i55zl  ][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.9ujrl49i55zl 14]</div>
+[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.yciao2bh7aco Silence in the Supermental boat]
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.lasf9f60t39g Habits][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.lasf9f60t39g  ][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.lasf9f60t39g 14]</div>
+[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.wl8ktwovgbdl Practices of Silence]
-[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.zhdwmwgcws4y Suffering and Role of Shadow][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.zhdwmwgcws4y  ][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.zhdwmwgcws4y 14]
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.dy3xvsjh9ijh General practices]</div>
-[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.4os8tdy46y8j Mirroring][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.4os8tdy46y8j  ][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.4os8tdy46y8j 15]
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.jl8b5p8khikg Sri Aurobindo’s Silence]</div>
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.w100ej7cwrds Self-Observation][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.w100ej7cwrds  ][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.w100ej7cwrds 15]</div>
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.pflx0qb4cx4j Meditating in Silence]</div>
-<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.weo4akzcbwi8 Psychic Consciousness and Mirroring][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.weo4akzcbwi8  ][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.weo4akzcbwi8 18]</div>
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.jkulst6sgkw8 Silence and Progress]</div>
-[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.3s50x8rcrpd Recommended Practices for Transformation of the Shadow][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.3s50x8rcrpd  ][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.3s50x8rcrpd 19]
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.m6cpxakstjcp Connecting to Divine]</div>
-[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.e4r8hp219v8c Yogic Discipline and Transformation of the Shadow][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.e4r8hp219v8c  ][https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ag9Cr_8Wfi6LWaA67EIqNJVeLxM-7wrYEWz8-FqPqqE/edit#heading=h.e4r8hp219v8c 20]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"></span>
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.ud6n2jlwu92y Surrender in Silence]</div>
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.s69blcpjnaml Silent Aspiration]</div>
-= What is Shadow?  =
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.96illntkxm28 Establishing Silence]</div>
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.65gu85g57fjx Silent self-observation]</div>
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.oegmttqi701m Communicating in Silence]</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">… </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">life seems to endow everyone not only with the possibility of expressing an ideal, but also with </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''contrary elements representing in a concrete manner the battle he has to wage and the victory he has to win for the realisation to become possible. '''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Consequently, all life is an education pursued more or less consciously, more or less willingly.</span>
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.mfu7hq1k70u9 Concentrating together in Silence]</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,  </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">3 February 1954)</span>
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.sxgj3scdo9gq Silence in Education]</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/3-february-1954#p15 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/3-february-1954#p15]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<div style="margin-left:0.635cm;margin-right:0cm;">[https://docs.google.com/document/d/14_VKqtggtmP8LZxrpysm2Fn8DS81CRLGiMY3pIiiPYU/edit#heading=h.dxtrm8vv51cw Resting in Silence]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"></span></div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">This shadow was like a sign of what you had to conquer in your nature in order to be able to </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''realise what you have come to do.'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">If you have a part to play, a mission to fulfil, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''you will always carry in yourself the main difficulty preventing you from realizing it, so that you have within your reach the victory you must win. '''</span>
+= What is Silence ? =
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,  </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">3 February 1954)</span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/3-february-1954#p16</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Silence: the condition of the being when it listens to the Divine.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p27 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p27]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Shadow is the </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''symbol of the inconscient'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">. This is where men rest at night from the effort of the day to become conscious. When consciousness becomes all-powerful, shadow will no longer be necessary and will disappear.</span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 4 September 1967)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Silence is the absence of all motion of thought or other vibration of activity.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p13 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p13]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/4-september-1967#p2 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/4-september-1967#p2]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The stilling of this current, running, circling, repeating thought-mind is the principal part of that </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''silencing'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">of the thought which is one of the most effective disciplines of Yoga.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/purification-intelligence-and-will#p12</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">'''There is only one soul and one existence; therefore we all see one objectivity only; but there are many knots of mind and ego in the one soul-existence, therefore we all see the one Object in different lights and shadows. '''</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Silence is always good; but I do not mean by quietness of mind entire silenc</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''e'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">. 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.</span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">22 September 1969)</span>
+<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p18</u></div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-154-155-156#p3 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-154-155-156#p3]
+<div style="color:#000000;">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.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">The obstinate pertinacity with which we cling to our meagre, fragmentary, night-besieged and grief-besieged individual existence even while the unbroken bliss of our universal life calls to us, is one of the most amazing of God's mysteries. It is only equalled by the infinite blindness with which we cast a shadow of our ego over the whole world and call that the universal being. These two darknesses are the very essence and potency of Maya. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/reality-and-the-cosmic-illusion#p24</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">6 June 1970</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+== Importance of Silence ==
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-538#p1 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-538#p1]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The quietude and silence which you feel and the sense of happiness in it are indeed the very basis of successful sadhana. &nbsp;</span>
+[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/peace#p4 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/peace#p4]
-<div style="color:#000000;">Atheism is the shadow or dark side of the highest perception of God. Every formula we frame about God, though always true as a symbol, becomes false when we accept it as a sufficient formula. The Atheist and Agnostic come to remind us of our error. </div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">7 June 1970</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">I said once that, to speak usefully for ten minutes, you should remain silent for ten days. I could add that, to act usefully for one day, you should keep quiet for a year! Of course, I am not speaking of the ordinary day-to-day acts that are needed for the common external life, but of those who have or believe that they have something to do for the world. And the silence I speak of is the inner quietude that those alone have who can act without being identified with their action, merged into it and blinded and deafened by the noise and form of their own movement. (The Mother, 26 May 1929)</div>
-<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-539-540#p1</u></div>
+<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/26-may-1929#p30</u></div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">But even before reaching this point, silence in itself is supremely useful, because in most people who have a somewhat developed and active mind, the mind is never at rest. During the day, its activity is kept under a certain control, but at night, during the sleep of the body, the control of the waking state is almost completely removed and the mind indulges in activities which are sometimes excessive and often incoherent. This creates a great stress </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">which leads to fatigue and the diminution of the intellectual faculties.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mental-education#p20 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mental-education#p20]
-<div style="color:#000000;">Perfect love casts out fear; but still keep thou some tender shadow and memory of the exile and it will make the perfection more perfect.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">But for the knowledge of the Self it is necessary to have the power of a complete intellectual passivity, the power of dismissing all thought, the power of the mind to think not at all which the Gita in one passage enjoins. This is a hard saying for the occidental mind to which thought is the highest thing and which will be apt to mistake the power of the mind not to think, its complete silence for the incapacity of thought. But this power of silence is a capacity and not an incapacity, a power and not a weakness. It is a profound and pregnant stillness. Only when the mind is thus entirely still, like clear, motionless and level water, in a perfect purity and peace of the whole being and the soul transcends thought, can the Self which exceeds and originates all activities and becomings, the Silence from which all words are born, the Absolute of which all relativities are partial reflections manifest itself in the pure essence of our being. In a complete silence only is the Silence heard; in a pure peace only is its Being revealed. Therefore to us the name of That is the Silence and the Peace.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-purified-understanding#p18 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-purified-understanding#p18]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#333333;">24 March 1970</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-414-415-416-417-418-419-420#p7</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Philosophy knows nothing about peace and silence or the inner and outer vital. These things are discovered only by Yoga.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-intellect-and-yoga#p2 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-intellect-and-yoga#p2]
-<div style="color:#000000;">...all moral suffering moulds your character and leads you straight to ecstasy, when you know how to take it.</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">But Yoga is not a mental field, the consciousness which has to be established is not a mental, logical or debating consciousness—it is even laid down by Yoga that unless and until the mind is stilled, including the intellectual or logical mind, and opens itself in quietude or silence to a higher and deeper consciousness, vision and knowledge, sadhana cannot reach its goal.</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">''10 August 1963''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/doubt-and-faith#p1 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/doubt-and-faith#p1]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-93#p2 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-93#p2]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-force-in-work#p7 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-force-in-work#p7]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">And when you see a very black shadow somewhere, very black, something that's truly painful, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''you know, you can be sure that you have in you the possibility of the corresponding light. '''</span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">Obviously to live in the silent Brahman, the best way is to live within where one can have the silence and resist all outward pulls.</div>
-<div style="color:#333333;">(The Mother, 21 December 1955)</div>
+<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p57</u></div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/21-december-1955#p50 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/21-december-1955#p50]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">In silence lies the source of the highest inspirations.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/letters-to-a-young-sadhak-xii#p8</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">That is why the journey is so long, that is why it is difficult. For if one truly consented to cease to exist, everything would become so easy, so swift, so luminous, so joyful—but perhaps not in the way men understand joy and ease. In truth, there are very few people who do not enjoy fighting. There are very few who could accept the absence of night, few can conceive of light except as the opposite of darkness</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">''': "Without shadows there would be no picture. Without struggle, there would be no victory. Without suffering there would be no joy." That is what they think, and so long as one thinks in this way, one is not yet born into the spirit.'''</span>
-<div style="color:#333333;">(The Mother, 26 November 1958)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Silence: the ideal condition for progress.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p1 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p1]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/26-november-1958#p15 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/26-november-1958#p15]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Integral silence: the source of true force.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/strength-force-and-power#p4</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">And when Sri Aurobindo writes that the body is "</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''only an instrument and a shadow," he is speaking of the body as it is now and will probably </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">continue to be for a long time to come. It is only the instrument of the Self, a very inadequate expression of this Self, and a shadow—a shadow, something vague and obscure in comparison with the light and precision of the eternal Self.'''</span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">In silence lies the greatest devotion. </div>
-<div style="color:#333333;">(The Mother, 26 November 1958)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 6 April 1972)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/6-april-1972#p1 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/6-april-1972#p1]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-11#p8 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-11#p8]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is in silence that the soul best expresses itself.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p22</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">In the silence of our heart there is always peace and joy.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p8</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">In a quiet silence strength is restored.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p10 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p10]
-<div style="color:#000000;">Always you will see that within you the shadow and the light are equal: you have an ability, you have also the negation of this ability… It is up to you to know how to use the one to realise the other. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">In peace and silence the Eternal manifests. Let nothing trouble you and the Eternal will manifest.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/peace#p19 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/peace#p19]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/21-april-1929#p27 21 April]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">1929)</span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/17-february-1951#p23 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/17-february-1951#p23]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">To take this step towards the new creation, one must learn to silence the mind and rise above into Consciousness. (The Mother, 2 April 1972)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/2-april-1972#p1</u></span>
-= How to Deal with “Shadow” ? =
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Silence in the vital: a powerful help for inner peace.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-vital#p26</u></span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It all depends on the quality of the silence—if it is a luminous silence, full of force and conscious concentration, it is good. If it is a tamasic and unconscious silence, it is harmful.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/10-june-1963#p3 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/10-june-1963#p3]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">One must learn always not only intellectually but also psychologically, one must progress in regard to character, one must cultivate the qualities and correct the defects; </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''everything should be made an occasion to cure ourselves of ignorance and incapacity;'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">life becomes then tremendously interesting and worth the trouble of living it. </span>
-<div style="color:#333333;">(The Mother, 27 January 1972)</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">It is out of this Silence that the Word which creates the worlds for ever proceeds; for the Word expresses that which is self-hidden in the Silence.</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/students#p24 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/students#p24]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/reality-omnipresent#p4</u></div>
+== Inner Silence ==
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''To be able to receive the new consciousness without deforming it:'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''One must be able to stand in the light of the Supreme Consciousness without casting a shadow.'''</span>
-<div style="color:#333333;">(The Mother, 16 April 1969)</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/the-new-consciousness#p2 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/the-new-consciousness#p2]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p76 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p76]
-<div style="color:#000000;">'''...the physical body is truly nothing but a very disfigured shadow of the eternal life of the Self. But this physical body is capable of progressive development; through each individual formation, the physical substance progresses, and one day it will be capable of building a bridge between physical life as we know it and the supramental life which is to manifest. ”'''</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p82 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p82]
-<div style="color:#333333;">(The Mother, 28 November 1958)</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-11#p17 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-11#p17]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p25 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p25]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is that everyone possesses in a large measure, and the exceptional individual in an increasing degree of precision, two opposite tendencies of character, in almost equal proportions, which are like the light and the shadow of the same thing. Thus someone who has the capacity of being exceptionally generous will suddenly find an obstinate avarice rising up in his nature, the courageous man will be a coward in some part of his being and the good man will suddenly have wicked impulses… In certain cases this education will encourage the movements that express the light, in others, on the contrary, those that express the shadow. If the circumstances and the environment are favourable, the light will grow at the expense of the shadow; otherwise the opposite will happen. And in this way the individual's character will crystallise according to the whims of Nature and the determinisms of material and vital life, unless a higher element comes in time, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''a conscious will which, refusing to allow Nature to follow her whimsical ways,'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">will replace them by a logical and clear-sighted discipline. This conscious will is what we mean by a rational method of education.</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/letters-to-a-young-sadhak-iii#p12</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p79</u></span>
-<div style="color:#333333;">(The Mother, August 1951)</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/vital-education#p6 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/vital-education#p6]
+== Fear of Silence ==
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">I have seen many cases in which Sri Aurobindo had given silence to somebody, had made his mind silent, and that person came back to him in a kind of despair, saying: "But I have become stupid!" For his thought was no longer excited.</span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">I remember a painter with whom I had a talk about the possibility of immortality and who asked me what a new world would be like. I told him things would be, for instance, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''luminous in themselves and there would no longer be this kind of reflected light which comes here upon earth from the sun.'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">And as I was speaking I saw his face becoming longer, more and more grave; finally he said, "But then how can one do painting without the shadow which brings out the light of things?..." I told him, "You have given exactly the key to the problem." </span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">(Sri Aurobindo, 30 January 1957)</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,  </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">3 February 1954)</span>
+[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/30-january-1957#p19 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/30-january-1957#p19][http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/30-january-1957#p19 ]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">A silence, an entry into a wide or even immense or infinite emptiness is part of the inner spiritual experience; of this silence and void the physical mind has a certain fear, the small superficially active thinking or vital mind a shrinking from it or dislike,—for it confuses the silence with mental and vital incapacity and the void with cessation or non-existence: but this silence is the silence of the spirit which is the condition of a greater knowledge, power and bliss, and this emptiness is the emptying of the cup of our natural being, a liberation of it from its turbid contents so that it may be filled with the wine of God; it is the passage not into non-existence but to a greater existence. </span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/3-february-1951#p47 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/3-february-1951#p47]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-divine-life#p16 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-divine-life#p16]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">They [desire and attachment] can sense the slightest weakness and strike where you are defenceless. The victories you win are only fleeting and the same battles are repeated indefinitely. The enemy whom you thought you had defeated rises up again and again to strike you. </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''You must have a strongly tempered character, an untiring endurance'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">to be able to withstand every defeat, every rebuff, every denial, every discouragement and the immense weariness of finding yourself always in contradiction with daily experience and earthly events.</span>
+= Effects of Silence =
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">February 1954)</span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-fear-of-death-and-the-four-methods-of-conquering-it#p11</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+== General effects ==
-= Transformation =
-== What is Transformation? ==
+<div style="color:#000000;">Besides, for inner growth, I do not believe that words are necessary. In silence all our help is there at its most powerful.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 6 September 1939)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/6-september-1939#p3</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Already someone has told me, quite rightly, that while practising this half-silence, or at any rate this continence of speech, one achieves quite naturally the mastery of numerous difficulties in one's character and also one avoids a great many frictions and misunderstandings. This is true.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/impurity#p27 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/impurity#p27]
-<div style="color:#000000;">It means the tapasya for the character, and for changing the psychological movements of the being, precisely to conquer the desires, conquer the passions, overcome egoism, get rid of fears. This is the inner tapasya. </div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">24 November 1954)</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It must have been the descent of the higher silence, the silence of the Self or Atman. In this silence one perceives, but the mind is not active,—things are sensed, but without any responsive connection or vibration. The silent Self is there as a separate reality, not bound or involved in the activity of Nature, aloof, detached and self-existent. Even if thoughts come across this silence, they do not disturb it; the Self is separate from the thinking mind also. In this connection the feeling "I think" is a survival from the old consciousness; in the full silence what one feels is "thought occurs in me"—the identification with thoughts as well as with the perception of objects ceases.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-descent-of-the-higher-powers#p26</u></span>
-= http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/24-november-1954#p6 =
+<div style="color:#000000;">This simply means that one suddenly comes under the influence of a higher force of which one is not conscious; one is conscious only of the effect, but not of the cause. That's all. It's nothing more than that. If you were conscious you would know what makes you silent, what makes you meditate, what kind of force has entered into you or acts upon you or influences you and puts you in the silence. But as you are not conscious, you are aware only of the effect, the result, that is, the silence that comes into you. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 24 August 1955)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/24-august-1955#p48 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/24-august-1955#p48]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">This vital education has two principal aspects, very different in their aims and methods, but both equally important. The first concerns the development and use of the sense organs. The second the </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''progressing awareness and control of the character, culminating in its transformation.'''</span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">August 1951)</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Or else, one may have an experience which is almost its very opposite but which comes to the same thing. Suddenly one plunges into a depth, one moves away from the thing one perceived, it seems distant, superficial, unimportant; one enters an inner silence or an inner calm or an inward vision of things, a profound feeling, a more intimate perception of circumstances and things, in which all values change. And one becomes aware of a sort of unity, a deep identity which is one in spite of the diverse appearances. (The Mother, 26 December 1956)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/26-december-1956#p19</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/vital-education#p8 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/vital-education#p8]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">When one has learned to silence the mind at will and to concentrate it in receptive silence, then there will be no problem that cannot be solved, no mental difficulty whose solution cannot be found. When it is agitated, thought becomes confused and impotent; in an attentive tranquillity, the light can manifest itself and open up new horizons to man's capacity.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mental-education#p22 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mental-education#p22]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/three-experiences-of-the-inner-being#p4</u></span>
-== Why Transform? ==
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/experiences-of-the-self-the-one-and-the-infinite#p7</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">Why this joy, this gladness, when the world is forever burning? O you who are enveloped in shadows, why do you not seek the light?</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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 </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">covering is the release of the spirit—and it is removed when there is a full and wide spiritual silence.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-psychic-being#p18 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-psychic-being#p18]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">25 April 1958)</span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/old-age#p1 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/old-age#p1]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is in the silence of a peaceful mind that one can best commune with Nature. (The Mother, 13 November 1969)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/13-november-1969#p1 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/13-november-1969#p1]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"> </u></span>
-= Aids in the Process of Transformation =
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">When one begins to feel the inner being and live in it (the result of the experience of peace and silence) the ordinary time sense disappears or becomes purely external.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/science-and-yoga#p56 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/science-and-yoga#p56]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">If you, in your consciousness, reach a state of silence, you perceive your state of silence everywhere, but others don't necessarily perceive it. You perceive it because you are in that state. </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 24 August 1955)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/24-august-1955#p42 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/24-august-1955#p42]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">This is the dark side. And so, the moment one sees it, if one looks at it and doesn't say, "It is I", if one says, "No, it is my shadow, it is the being I must throw out of myself", one puts on it the light of the other part, one tries to bring them face to face; and with the knowledge and light of the other, one doesn't try so much to convince—because that is very difficult—but one compels it to remain quiet... first to stand farther away, then one flings it very far away so that it can no longer return—</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''putting a great light on it.'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">There are instances </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">in which one can put upon this being—or this shadow—put upon it such an intense light that it transforms it, and it changes into what is the truth of your being. </span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">25 April 1958)</span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">There is another phenomenon which is considered spiritual, but which is spiritual only indirectly: it is when you find yourself near someone who has controlled his thought and achieved mental silence. You suddenly feel this silence coming down into yourself and something which was impossible for you half an hour earlier suddenly becomes a reality. This is a rather unusual phenomenon. </div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p74 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-july-1954#p74]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 22 January 1951)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/22-january-1951#p16</u></span>
+== Ascent and Descent ==
-== Prayer ==
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">There are two movements that are necessary—one is the ascent through the increasing of peace and silence to its source above the mind,—that is indicated by the tendency of the consciousness to rise out of the body to the top of the head and above where it is easy to realise the Self in all its stillness and liberation and wideness and to open to the other powers of the Higher Consciousness. The other is the descent of the peace, silence, the spiritual freedom and wideness and the powers of the higher consciousness as they develop into the lower down to the most physical and even the subconscient. To both of these movements there can be a block—a block above due to the mind and lower nature being unhabituated (it is that really and not incapacity) and a block below due to the physical consciousness and its natural slowness to change. Everybody has these blocks but by persistent will, aspiration or abhyāsa they can be overcome.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/ascent-and-descent#p16 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/ascent-and-descent#p16]
-<div style="color:#000000;">There is a kind of prayer at once spontaneous and unselfish which is like a great call, usually not for one's own self personally, but like something that may be called an intercession with the Divine. It is extremely powerful. I have had countless instances of things which have been realised almost instantaneously due to prayers of this kind. It implies a great faith, a great ardour, a great sincerity, and a great simplicity of heart also, something that does not calculate, does not plan, does not bargain, does not give with the idea of receiving in exchange. For, the majority of men give with one hand and hold out the other to get something in exchange; the largest number of prayers are of that sort. But there are others of the kind I have described, acts of thanksgiving, a kind of canticle, and these are very good.</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">8 July 1953)</span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">I have said that the most decisive way for the Peace or the Silence to come is by a descent from above. In fact, in reality though not always in appearance, that is how they always come;—not in appearance always, because the sadhak is not always conscious of the process; he feels the peace settling in him or at least manifesting, but he has not been conscious how and whence it came. Yet it is the truth that all that belongs to the higher consciousness comes from above, not only the spiritual peace and silence, but the Light, the Power, the Knowledge, the higher seeing and thought, the Ananda come from above.</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/8-july-1953#p15 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/8-july-1953#p15]
+[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-psychic-and-spiritual-realisations#p18 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-psychic-and-spiritual-realisations#p18]
-== Trust ==
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">You must dismiss the fear of the concentration. The emptiness you feel coming on you is the silence of the great peace in which you become aware of your self, not as the small ego shut up in the body, but as the spiritual self wide as the universe. Consciousness is not dissolved; it is the limits of the consciousness that are dissolved. In that silence thoughts may cease for a time, there may be nothing but a great limitless freedom and wideness, but into that silence, that empty wideness descends the vast peace from above, light, bliss, knowledge, the higher Consciousness in which you feel the oneness of the Divine. It is the beginning of the transformation and there is nothing in it to fear.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-universal-or-cosmic-consciousness#p37</u></span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/descent-and-the-lower-nature#p14</u></span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">If your consciousness rises above the head, that means that it goes beyond the ordinary mind to the centre above which receives the higher consciousness or else towards the ascending levels of the higher consciousness itself. The first result is the silence and peace of the Self which is the basis of the higher consciousness; this may afterwards descend into the lower levels, into the very body. </div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">If the </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''trust '''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">is there, spontaneous, candid, unquestioning, it works better than anything else, and the results are marvellous. It is with the contradictions and doubts of the mind that one spoils everything, with this kind of notion which comes when one is in difficulties. one builds a wall between oneself and the force one wants to receive. </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''The psychic being has this trust'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">, has it wonderfully, without a shadow, without an argument, without a contradiction. And when it is like that, there is not a prayer which does not get an answer, no aspiration which is not realised.</span>
+<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/ascent-and-descent#p9</u></div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">17 November 1954)</span>
+== Thinking in Silence ==
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/17-november-1954#p14</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
-== Surrender ==
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Those who are at the bottom of the scale, who have never trained their minds, find it necessary to speak in order to think. It happens even that it is the sound of their voice which enables them to associate ideas; if they do not express them, they do not think. At a higher level there are those who still have to move words about in their heads in order to think, even though they do not utter them aloud. Those who truly begin to think are those who are able to think without words, that is to say, to be in contact with the idea and express it through a wide variety of words and phrases. There are higher degrees—many higher degrees—but those who think without words truly begin to reach an intellectual state and for them it is much easier to make the mind quiet, that is to say, to stop the movement of associating the words that constantly move about like passers-by in a public </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">square, and to contemplate an idea in silence.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/conjugate-verses#p89</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p6 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p6]
-<div style="color:#000000;">The real bar to self-surrender, whether to the Universal or to the Transcendent, is the individual's love of his own limitations. For, in the Divine you do not really lose your individuality: you only give up your egoism and become the true individual, the divine personality which is not temporary like the construction of the physical consciousness which is usually taken for yourself.</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">1930 - 1931)</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p58</u></span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/knowledge-by-unity-with-the-divine-the-divine-will-in-the-world#p4 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/knowledge-by-unity-with-the-divine-the-divine-will-in-the-world#p4]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+== <span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Silence in the Physical</span> ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">The most important surrender is the surrender of your character, your way of being, so that it may change.</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/26-april-1951 26 April 1951)]
+<div style="color:#000000;">''What is meant by the "silence of the physical consciousness" and how can one remain in this silence?''</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/28-april-1951#p32 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/28-april-1951#p32]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">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.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">Human nature is made up of imperfections, even its righteousness and virtue are pretensions, imperfections and prancings of self-approbatory egoism.... What is aimed at by us is a spiritual truth as the basis of life, the first words of which are surrender and union with the Divine and the transcendence of ego. So long as that basis is not established, a sadhak is only an ignorant and imperfect human being struggling with the evils of the lower nature.... What is created by spiritual progress is an inner closeness and intimacy in the inner being, the sense of the Mother's love and presence etc."</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">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.</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">24 February 1965)</span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">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.</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/24-february-1965#p6</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 15 October 1959)</div>
+<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/15-october-1959#p2</u></div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">It is certainly not by becoming morose and melancholy that one draws near the Divine. One must always keep in one's heart an unshakable faith and confidence and in one's head the certitude of victory. Drive away these shadows which come between you and me and hide me from your sight. It is in the pure light of certitude that you can become conscious of my presence.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">If the peace and silence continue to come down, they usually become so intense as to seize the physical mind also after a time.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/concentration-and-meditation#p79 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/concentration-and-meditation#p79]
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother)</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/letters-to-a-young-sadhak-iv#p13 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/letters-to-a-young-sadhak-iv#p13]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/difficulties-of-the-physical-nature#p28 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/difficulties-of-the-physical-nature#p28]
-<div style="color:#000000;">No, some begin with an offering and end with surrender. It depends upon the character of each one.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">If the physical being has felt and assimilated the silence and peace, then inertia ought not to rise up.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/difficulties-of-the-physical-nature#p29</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 22 February 1951)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Certainly, peace, purity and silence can be felt in all material things—for the Divine Self is there in all.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/peace#p27 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/peace#p27]
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/22-february-1951#p11 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/22-february-1951#p11]
+== Subconscient ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">Most people seem to look upon surrender as an abdication of the personality; but that is a grievous error.For the individual is meant to manifest one aspect of the Divine Consciousness, and the expression of its characteristic nature is what creates his personality.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 4 August 1929)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-subconscient-and-the-integral-yoga#p49</u></span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/4-august-1929#p5 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/4-august-1929#p5]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+== Silence, Sleep and Sachidananda ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">The Divine's glory transforms defeats into eternity's victories, shadows have fled before His radiant brightness. </div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">9 Dec 1954</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">Generally, when you have what you call dreamless sleep, it is one of two things; either you do not remember what you dreamt or you fell into absolute unconsciousness which is almost death—a taste of death. But there is the possibility of a sleep in which you enter into an absolute silence, immobility and peace in all parts of your being and your consciousness merges into Sachchidananda. You can hardly call it sleep, for it is extremely conscious. In that condition you may remain for a few minutes, but these few minutes give you more rest and refreshment than hours of ordinary sleep. You cannot have it by chance; it requires a long training. </div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-divine-is-with-you#p57 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-divine-is-with-you#p57]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 21 April 1929)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/21-april-1929#p11 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/21-april-1929#p11]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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 </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">undesirable, obscuring, lowering, often fatiguing rather than restful, the reverse of the luminous silence.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/sleep#p50</u></span>
-== Purity ==
+<div style="color:#000000;"></div>
+= Silence, Activity and Action =
-<div style="color:#000000;">Mental purity: a mirror which does not distort. </div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">24 September 1945</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/purity#p11 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/purity#p11]
+== General  ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">Perfect mental purity: a spotless mirror constantly turned towards the Divine. </div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">24 September 1945</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is only in silence that anything great can be done.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/india#p59 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/india#p59]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/purity#p12</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">For the action is based on the silence and by the silence it is free.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/christianity-and-theosophy#p16</u></span>
-== Freedom from Attachment ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">When you can live in light and joy, are you going to cling to shadow and suffering?</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">In silence lies the greatest receptivity. And in an immobile silence the vastest action is done. </div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">27 June 1958</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 19 December 1971)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/19-december-1971#p1</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/the-path#p31 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/the-path#p31]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">In the silence of the heart, you will receive the command.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p7 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p7]
-<div style="color:#000000;">The other category of suffering, whose initial cause is the pain of separation created by the adversary, is totally opposite in nature: it is the suffering that comes from divine compassion, the suffering of love that feels compassion for the world's misery, whatever its origin, cause or effect. But this suffering, which is of a purely psychic character, contains no egoism, no self-pity; it is full of peace and strength and power of action, of faith in the future and the will for victory; it does not pity but consoles, it does not identify itself with the ignorant movement in others but cures and illumines it.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 5 February 1956)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">To know how to observe in silence is the source of skillfulness.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/progress-and-perfection-in-work#p63</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/5-february-1956#p4 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/5-february-1956#p4]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">In concentration and silence we must gather strength for the right action.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p16 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p16]
-<div style="color:#000000;">The only way of being truly free is to make your surrender to the Divine entire, without reservation, because then all that binds you, ties you down, chains you, falls away naturally from you and has no longer any importance. If someone comes and blames you, you may say, "On what authority does he blame me, does he know the supreme will?" And the same thing when you are congratulated.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is not possible for the spontaneous silent condition to last always at once, but that is what must grow in one till there is a constant inner silence—a silence which cannot be disturbed by any outward activity or even by any attempt at attack or disturbance.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p24</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 10 February 1951)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p31</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:#ffd966;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/10-february-1951#p8 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/10-february-1951#p8]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Whatever has been done in the world has been done by the very few who can stand outside the action in silence; for it is they who are the instruments of the Divine Power. They are dynamic agents, conscious instruments; they bring down the forces that change the world. </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Things can be done in that way, not by a restless activity. In peace, in silence and in quietness the world was built; and each time that something is to be truly built, it is in peace and silence and quietness that it must be done. It is ignorance to believe that you must run from morning to night and labour at all sorts of futile things in order to do something for the world. </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The Mother, 26 May 1929)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/26-may-1929#p28 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/26-may-1929#p28]
-== Choices and Willpower ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">For knowledge and power are essentially the same thing—that is to say, you must not admit in any part of your being this shadow of bad will which is in contradiction to the central will for progress and which makes you impotent, without courage, without strength in the face of an evil that you must destroy. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is in the silence of the mind that the strongest and freest action can come, e.g. the writing of a book, poetry, inspired speech etc. When the mind is active it interferes with the inspiration, puts in its own small ideas which get mixed up with the inspiration or starts something from a lower level or simply stops the inspiration altogether by bubbling up with all sorts of mere mental suggestions. So also intuitions or action etc. can come more easily when the ordinary inferior movement of the mind is not there. It is also in the silence of the mind that it is easiest for knowledge to come from within or above, from the psychic or from the higher consciousness.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/thought-and-knowledge#p65</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">21 March 1958</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">Ah! From the practical point of view, you must be in a state of inner silence, with a mental activity exclusively occupied with forming the thing you want to do, the progress you want to accomplish, that is to say, the mental construction you need for your work. And your capacity for observation—it is infinitely preferable, I could say absolutely indispensable, to use it to observe your field of action, the processes you employ for your action, the results obtained, the principle you can arrive at from the experience, the knowledge you can obtain, indeed, all these things... but not to turn back on yourself and look at yourself acting.</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/the-sage#p19</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 19 January 1955)</div>
+[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/19-january-1955#p26 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/19-january-1955#p26]
-<div style="color:#000000;">But the thought "What's the use?" must not come in to weaken the will. The idea that one is born with a certain character and can do nothing about it is a stupidity.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;"> (The Mother, 23 December 1950)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">For me, for what I am trying to do, action in silence is always much more important.... The force which is at work is not limited by words, and this gives it an infinitely greater strength, and it expresses itself in each consciousness in accordance with its own particular mode, which makes it infinitely more effective. A certain vibration is given out in silence, with a special purpose, to obtain a definite result, but according to the mental receptivity of each person it is expressed in each individual consciousness exactly in the form which can be the most effective, the most active, the most immediately useful for each individual; while if it is formulated in words, this formula has to be received by each person in its fixity—the fixity of the words given to it—and it loses much of its strength and fullness of action because, first, the words are not always understood as they are said and then they are not always adapted to the understanding of each one.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/5-june-1957#p11 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/5-june-1957#p11]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/23-december-1950#p9</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The dynamic action when it comes acts without disturbing the silence and peace. There is the vast peace and silence and in that the Force or the Will works to do what is necessary—</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">in that also is the action of Agni or the psychic.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-force-in-work#p20 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-force-in-work#p20]
-<div style="color:#000000;">One can come out of all these competitions with a greater self-control and a detachment from results which are a great help to the formation of an exceptional character… if when playing or taking part in tournaments and competitions, you keep the right spirit, it is a very good education, for it compels you to make a special effort and to exceed your ordinary limits a little. It is certainly an opportunity to make conscious many of your movements which otherwise would always remain unconscious. </div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 1 May 1957)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">We have said that there is only one safety, never to act except in harmony with the divine Will. There is one question: how to know that it is the divine Will which makes you act? I replied to the person who put to me this question (although this person did not agree with me) that it is not difficult to distinguish the voice of the Divine: one cannot make a mistake. You need not be very far on the path to be able to recognise it; you must listen to the still, small peaceful voice which speaks in the silence of your heart. (The Mother, 8 February 1951)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/8-february-1951#p17 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/8-february-1951#p17]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/1-may-1957#p7</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The Gita promises us freedom for the spirit even in the midst of works and the full energies of Nature, if we accept subjection of our whole being to that which is higher than the separating and limiting ego. It proposes an integral dynamic activity founded on a still passivity; a largest possible action irrevocably based on an immobile calm is its secret,—free expression out of a supreme inward silence.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/self-surrender-in-works-the-way-of-the-gita#p11</u></span>
-== Perseverance  ==
+<div style="color:#000000;">The Supreme pours Himself out of an eternal peace, poise and silence into an eternal activity, free and infinite, freely fixing for itself its self-determinations, using infinite quality to shape out of it varied combination of quality. We have to go back to that peace, poise and silence and act out of it with the divine freedom from the bondage of qualities but still using qualities even the most opposite largely and flexibly for the divine work in the world.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">It is willing to endure the utmost with a smile if it is a condition of the transformation. Neither complaining nor grumbling, it endures happily because it is for the sake of the Divine that it does so. It has the unshakable conviction that the victory will be won.</div>
+<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-modes-of-the-self#p11</u></div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 1930-31)</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">It is possible only when one has had the experience of complete silence in the mental region and when the spiritual force with its light and power descends through the mind and makes it act directly without its following its usual method of analysis, deduction, reasoning. All these faculties which are usually considered the normal activities of the mind, must be stopped, and yet the spiritual Light, Knowledge and Power must be able to transform them into a channel of direct expression, without using these means to express themselves.</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/endurance-the-vitals-hunger-for-praise-signs-of-the-converted-vital#p6 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/endurance-the-vitals-hunger-for-praise-signs-of-the-converted-vital#p6]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 17 September 1958)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/17-september-1958#p8</u></span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">All speech and action comes prepared out of the eternal Silence.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-277-278#p1 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-277-278#p1]
-== Discipline ==
+<div style="color:#000000;">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. </div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">… </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">it is the necessity of an inner </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''discipline'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">. Without </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''discipline'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">you won't be able to get anywhere, without </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''discipline'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">you can't even live the normal life of a normal man. But instead of having the conventional </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''discipline'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">of ordinary societies or ordinary institutions, I would have liked and I still want you to have the </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''discipline'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">you set yourselves, for the love of perfection, your own perfection, the perfection of your being.</span>
+[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/reality-omnipresent#p14 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/reality-omnipresent#p14]
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 13 June 1956)</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/13-june-1956#p52 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/13-june-1956#p52]
+== Working in Silence ==
-== Organising Mind ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">If the mind is not wise and clear-sighted, the poor body suffers the consequences of the orders it receives. I do not speak of the orders it receives from the vital. The mind with its rigid principles and the vital with its excesses and outbursts and passions are quick to destroy the body's equilibrium and to create a condition of fatigue, exhaustion and illness.  </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Work is always best done in silence except so far as it is necessary to speak for the work itself. Conversation is best kept for leisure hours. So nobody should object to your silence during work.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/interactions-with-others-and-the-practice-of-yoga#p53 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/interactions-with-others-and-the-practice-of-yoga#p53]
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 25 January 1951)</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/25-january-1951#p18</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">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.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">Well, for oneself, one must organise one's own things—and at the same time one's own ideas—in the same way, and must know exactly where things are and be able to go straight to them, because one's organization is logical… put their ideas into order and can also organise their character and can finally control their movements. And then, if you make progress, you succeed in governing your physical life; you begin to have a control over your physical movements.</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">One can do everything while keeping the mind quiet, and what one does is better done. </div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 3 February 1954)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 7 December 1966)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/7-december-1966#p7 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/7-december-1966#p7]
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/3-february-1954#p10 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/3-february-1954#p10]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">What has to happen is that this inner consciousness should be always there not troubled by any disturbance with the constant silence, inner happiness, calm quietude, etc., while the outer consciousness does what is necessary in the way of work etc. or, what is better, has that done through it—it is the latter experience that you have some days as someone pushing the work with so much continuous force without your feeling tired.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p74</u></span>
-== Sincerity ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">But it is only when you look yourself in the face, in the light of your highest consciousness, that whatever you want to eliminate from your nature will disappear. Without this striving for absolute sincerity, the defect, the little shadow, will stay in a corner biding its time to come out. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-lower-vital-being#p36</u></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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-supermind-or-supramental#p45</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 6 January 1951)</div>
+== Receptivity in Silence ==
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/6-january-1951#p25 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/6-january-1951#p25]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">The method for each individual is worked out as the activity proceeds, for each ego has its own character and needs a particular method. The only qualities indispensable for all are absolute perseverance and sincerity. The least tendency to deceive oneself makes success impossible. </div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">In silence lies the greatest receptivity. And in an immobile silence the vastest action is done. </div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 9 Devember 1971)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 19 December 1971)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/19-december-1971#p1</u></span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/9-december-1971#p4 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/9-december-1971#p4]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">What you mean but don't say... it's those who go beyond thought, silence their thoughts, those who have an absolutely silent and immobile mind, who open to inner regions and write almost automatically what comes to them from above. That's what you meant but didn't say. But that's quite a different thing, and it happens once in a thousand years. It's not a frequent phenomenon. First of all one must be a yogi to be able to do all that. But an inspired poet, as we call him... that's something absolutely different. All men of some genius, that is, those who have an opening upon a world slightly higher than the ordinary mind, are called "inspired". One who makes some discoveries is also inspired. Each time one is in contact with something a little higher than the ordinary human field, one is inspired. So when one is not altogether limited by the ordinary consciousness one receives inspirations from above; the source of his production is higher than the ordinary mental consciousness.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 24 August 1955)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/24-august-1955#p37 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/24-august-1955#p37]
-<div style="color:#000000;">For that [to find out what it is that you are meant to realise] you must be absolutely sincere and impartial. You must observe yourself as if you were observing and criticising a third person. You must not start with an idea that this is your life's mission, this is your particular capacity, this you are to do or that you are to do, in this lies your talent or genius, etc. That will carry you away from the right track. It is not the liking or disliking of your external being, your mental or vital or physical choice that determines the true line of your growth. Nor should you take up the opposite attitude and say, "I am good for nothing in this matter, I am useless in that one; it is not for me." Neither vanity and arrogance nor self-depreciation and false modesty should move you. As I said, you must be absolutely impartial and unconcerned. You should be like a mirror that reflects the truth and does not judge. </div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 12 November 1952)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">''(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. </span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/12-november-1952#p6 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/12-november-1952#p6]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 5 June 1957)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/5-june-1957#p19</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is a discipline to be followed. For a long time one may try and not succeed, but as soon as one succeeds in making a "mirror", still and attentive, one always obtains a result, not necessarily with a precise form of thought but always with the sensations of a light coming from above. And then, if one can receive this light coming from above without entering immediately into a whirl of activity, receive it in calm and silence and let it penetrate deep into the being, then after a while it expresses itself either as a luminous thought or as a very precise indication here (Mother indicates the heart), in this other centre.</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 23 July 1958)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/23-july-1958#p10 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/23-july-1958#p10]
-== Happiness and Optimism ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">Happy heart: smiling, peaceful, wide open, without a shadow. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/emptiness-voidness-blankness-and-silence#p37</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-77-78#p20</u></span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/happiness#p1 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/happiness#p1]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is an admirable state; it is perfect peace of mind. There is no longer any need to accumulate acquired knowledge, received ideas which have to be memorised; it is no longer necessary to clutter one's brain with thousands and thousands of things in order to have at one's command, when the time comes, the knowledge that is needed to perform an action, to impart a teaching, to solve a problem. The mind is silent, the brain is still, everything is clear, quiet, calm; and at the right moment, by divine Grace a drop of light falls into the consciousness and what needs to be known is known. Why should one care to remember—why try to retain that knowledge? On the day or at the moment that it is needed one will have it again. At each second one is a blank page on which what must be known will be inscribed—in the peace, the repose, the silence of a perfect receptivity.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-4#p4</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Silence and a modest, humble, attentive receptivity; no concern for appearances or even any anxiety to be—one is quite modestly, quite humbly, quite simply the instrument which of itself is nothing and knows nothing, but is ready to receive everything and transmit everything.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-4#p6 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-4#p6]
-<div style="color:#000000;">The first necessity is to abstain from thinking of anyone in a depreciatory way. When we meet a person, our criticising thoughts give to him, so to say, a blow on the nose which naturally creates a revolt in him. It is our mental formation that acts like a deforming mirror to that person, and then one would become queer even if one were not.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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. </span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">18 July 1954</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 29 August 1956)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/29-august-1956#p4</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">And if one carries this a little further, one should never think and plan beforehand what one ought to say or write. One should simply be able to </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;">one's mind, to turn it like a receptacle towards the higher Consciousness and express as it receives it, in mental </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''silence'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">, what comes from above. That would be true spontaneity. </span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/judging-others#p11 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/judging-others#p11]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 29 August 1956)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/29-august-1956#p7</u></span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">At first it might seem the straight and right way to silence the mind altogether, to silence the intellect, the mental and personal will, the desire mind and the mind of emotion and sensation, and to allow in that perfect silence the Self, the Spirit, the Divine to disclose himself and leave him to illuminate the being by the supramental light and power and Ananda. And this is indeed a great and powerful discipline. It is the calm and still mind much more readily and with a much greater purity than the mind in agitation and action that opens to the Infinite, reflects the Spirit, becomes full of the Self and awaits like a consecrated and purified temple the unveiling of the Lord of all our being and nature. It is true also that the freedom of this silence gives a possibility of a larger play of the intuitive being and admits with less obstruction and turmoil of mental groping and seizing the great intuitions, inspirations, revelations which emerge from within or descend from above. It is therefore an immense gain if we can acquire the capacity of always being able at will to command an absolute tranquillity and silence of the mind free from any necessity of mental thought or movement and disturbance and, based in that silence, allow thought and will and feeling to happen in us only when the Shakti wills it and when it is needful for the divine purpose.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">There is a certain category of people who are perfectly adapted to Nature's ways: these are the optimists. For them the days are brighter because of the nights, colours are vivid because of the shadows, joy is more intense because of suffering, pain gives a greater charm to pleasure, illness gives health all its value… </div>
+[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-intuitive-mind#p5 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-intuitive-mind#p5]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">August 1953</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-four-austerities-and-the-four-liberations#p75 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-four-austerities-and-the-four-liberations#p75]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Descents of peace are good, but an increasingly stable quietude and silence of the mind is something more valuable. When that is there then other things can come—usually one at a time, light or strength and force or knowledge or ananda. </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p75 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p75]
-<div style="color:#000000;">… they should have developed in their character and action a great deal of patience, endurance, kindness, understanding and impartiality. They should have no likes or dislikes, no attractions or repulsions.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Supreme Lord, teach us to be silent so that in silence we may receive Thy force and understand Thy will.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/prayers#p105</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">5 July 1961</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/correspondence#p19 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/correspondence#p19]
+== Knowing in Silence ==
-== Realisation ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">It is the realisation which is expressed in action. There is a realisation in inaction like that of those who enter into contemplations from which they don't come out, and who don't move; and then there is a dynamic realisation which transforms all your action, all your movements, all your way of being, your character.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Certain silences are revelations and are more expressive than words.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p18 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p18]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/15-june-1955#p2 15 June 1955]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/15-june-1955#p2 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/15-june-1955#p2]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">With words one can at times understand, but only in silence one knows.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p26</u></span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is obviously in the silence of the mind that it is possible to perceive the Divine Command. The true way of knowing is above words and thoughts.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-262-263-264#p6</u></span>
-== Psychic and Aspiration ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">As soon as the presence of the psychic consciousness is united with the aspiration, the intensity takes on quite a different character, as if it were filled with the very essence of an inexpressible joy.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is only in perfect quietness and silence, free from all prejudices and preferences, that the consciousness can perceive the truth.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/work-and-teaching-1#p28 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/work-and-teaching-1#p28]
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 1 August 1956)</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/1-august-1956#p46 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/1-august-1956#p46]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is necessary in order to develop a deeper consciousness and outlook on things that understands in silence the movements of Nature in oneself and others and is not moved or disturbed or superficially interested and drawn into an external movement.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p45</u></span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/memory-self-consciousness-and-the-ignorance#p5 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/21/memory-self-consciousness-and-the-ignorance#p5]
-<div style="color:#000000;">This delight, this wonderful laughter that dissolves every shadow, every pain, every suffering! You only have to go deep enough within yourself to find the inner Sun, to let yourself be flooded by it; and then there is nothing but a cascade of harmonious, luminous, sunlit laughter, which leaves no room for any shadow or pain.</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#333333;">14 January 1963</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">"In Silence is wisdom"—it is in the inner silence of the mind that true knowledge can come; for the ordinary activity of the mind only creates surface ideas and representations which are not true knowledge. Speech is usually only the expression of the superficial nature—therefore to throw oneself out too much in such speech wastes the energy and prevents the inward listening which brings the word of true knowledge.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p9 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p9]
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-81-82-83#p11 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-81-82-83#p11]
+<div style="color:#000000;">For a knowledge from above begins to descend, frequently, constantly, then uninterruptedly, and to manifest in the mind's quietude or silence; intuitions and inspirations, revelations born of a greater sight, a higher truth and wisdom, enter into the being, a luminous intuitive discrimination works which dispels all darkness of understanding or dazzling confusions, puts all in order; a new consciousness begins to form.</div>
+<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-triple-transformation#p26</u></div>
-== Humour and Embracing Shadow ==
+<div style="color:#000000;">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.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">On the contrary, He has a sense of humour—Sri Aurobindo has told us many times already that the Supreme has a sense of humour, that we are the ones who want to make Him into a grave and invariably serious character—and He may find it very amusing to come and embrace an unbeliever. Someone who has only the day before declared, "God does not exist. I do not believe in Him. All that is folly and ignorance....", He gathers him into His arms, He presses him to His heart—and He laughs in his face. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 23 June 1929)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/23-june-1929#p9</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">5 December 1958</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/30-september-1953#p6</u></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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-160-161#p5</u></span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-12#p7 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-12#p7]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Naturally, all these discussions (or exchanges of opinion) are purely mental and have no value from the viewpoint of the Truth. Each mind has its way of seeing and understanding things, and even if you could unite and bring together all these ways of seeing, you would still be very far from attaining the Truth. It is only when, in the silence of the mind, you can lift yourself above thought, that you are ready to know by identity.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/opinion-and-truth#p5</u></span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Truth is above mind; it is in silence that one can enter into communication with it.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/truth-is-above-mind#p21</u></span>
-== Aesthetic Sense ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">A methodical and enlightened cultivation of the senses can, little by little, eliminate from the child whatever is by contagion vulgar, commonplace and crude. This education will have very happy effects even on his character. For one who has developed a truly refined taste will, because of this very refinement, feel incapable of acting in a crude, brutal or vulgar manner. This refinement, if it is sincere, brings to the being a nobility and generosity which will spontaneously find expression in his behaviour and will protect him from many base and perverse movements.</div>
+== Reading in Silence ==
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">August 1951</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/vital-education#p11 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/vital-education#p11]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-2#p19</u></span>
-== Equanimity ==
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">In any case, I advise always to read a little at a time, keeping the mind as tranquil as one can, without making an effort to understand, but keeping the head as silent as possible, and letting the force contained in what one reads enter deep within. This force received in the calm and the silence will do its work of light and, if needed, will create in the brain the necessary cells for the understanding. Thus, when one re-reads the same thing some months later, one perceives that the thought expressed has become much more clear and close, and even sometimes altogether familiar.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/study-of-works-of-sri-aurobindo-and-the-mother#p4</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Take one of Sri Aurobindo's books. Read a sentence or two. Then remain silent and concentrated to understand the deeper meaning. Try to concentrate deeply enough to obtain mental silence and begin again daily until you obtain a result.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/study-of-works-of-sri-aurobindo-and-the-mother#p29</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">...they should have developed in their character and action a great deal of patience, endurance, kindness, understanding and impartiality. They should have no likes or dislikes, no attractions or repulsions.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/reading#p31</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">5 July 1961</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/correspondence#p19 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/correspondence#p19]
+== Listening to music in Silence ==
-= Challenges Faced During the Process =
+<div style="color:#000000;">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. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 25 July 1956)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/25-july-1956#p12</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">There are physical movements, effects of the pressure of the Yoga, which sometimes create ungrounded fears that may do harm if the fear is not rejected… You must keep an unshaken confidence and feel that whatever happens is the thing that had to happen. Once you have chosen the path, you must boldly accept all the consequences of your choice.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p81</u></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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/arts#p84</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 16 June 1929)</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/16-june-1929#p18 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/16-june-1929#p18]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+== Fighting in Silence ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">You know perhaps that in all schools of initiation it used to be said that it takes thirty-five years to change one's character! So you must not expect the thing to be done in a minute.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 10 February 1951)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-272-273#p3</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/10-february-1951#p11 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/10-february-1951#p11]
+== Food ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">The subconscient is the main cause why all things repeat themselves and nothing ever gets changed except in appearance. It is the cause why people say character cannot be changed, the cause also of the constant return of things one hoped to have got rid of forever... All too that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains as seed ready to surge up or sprout up at any moment.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 16 March 1955)</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/16-march-1955#p1 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/16-march-1955#p1]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">All quarrels in the place where food is prepared make food indigestible. The cooking must be done in silence and harmony.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/cooking-and-eating#p17</u></span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is much better to eat the meal in silence or at any rate in quietness.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/food#p9</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">If you see more clearly and see things which are not very pretty, it is not the fault of the Supermind, it is your fault! It gives you a light, a mirror in which you can see yourself better than you did before, and you are a little troubled because it is not always very pretty? </div>
+== Art ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 11 July 1956)</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/11-july-1956#p21 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/11-july-1956#p21]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">If by Yoga you are capable of reaching this source of all art, then you are master, if you will, of all the arts. Those that may have gone there before, found it perhaps happier, more pleasant or full of a rapturous ease to remain and enjoy the Beauty and the Delight that are there, not manifesting it, not embodying it upon earth. But this abstention is not all the truth nor the true truth of Yoga; it is rather a deformation, a diminution of the dynamic freedom of Yoga by the more negative spirit of Sannyasa. The will of the Divine is to manifest, not to remain altogether withdrawn in inactivity and an absolute silence; if the Divine Consciousness were really an inaction of unmanifesting bliss, there would never have been any creation.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/28-july-1929#p25</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">One can at times see a sort of shadow pass which comes from the mind or the vital; but these are interventions of no importance which cannot at all change the nature of the psychic inspiration, if one does not let them have the upper hand. One must have a very considerable strength and independence of character to come out of it, for usually you have to break through with much motion and that has serious repercussions on your life.</span><span style="background-color:#f1c232;color:#000000;"> </span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 20 June 1956)</div>
+== Understanding a teaching in silence ==
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/20-june-1956#p84 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/20-june-1956#p84]
-<div style="color:#000000;">I shall not do it, I shall not move; even if I have to bind myself hand and foot, I shall not do it." It is a partial success—but it is a great victory because, due to this, next time you will be able to do a little more.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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. </span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 5 August 1953)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 25 July 1956)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/25-july-1956#p14</u></span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/5-august-1953#p46 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/5-august-1953#p46]
+== Silent Listening ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">Only, between your soul and your active consciousness there are two characters who are in the habit of making a lot of noise, the mind and the vital. And because they make a lot of noise, while the soul does not, or, rather, makes as little as possible, their noise prevents you from hearing the voice of the soul. </div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">14 November 1958</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-9#p8 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-9#p8]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">"We say something that is quite clear, but the way in which it is understood is stupefying! Each sees in it something else than what was intended or even puts into it something that is quite the contrary of its sense. If you want to understand truly and avoid this kind of </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">error, you must go behind the sound and the movement of the words and learn to listen 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;">(The Mother, 12 March 1951)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/12-march-1951#p9</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is a matter of attention. If you concentrate your attention on what is being said, with the will to understand it correctly, the silence is created spontaneously—it is attention that creates the silence. </span>
-== Desire ==
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 12 March 1951)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/12-march-1951#p12</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">Desires are waves of the vast sea of the obscure lower nature and they pass from one person to another. Men do not generate a desire in themselves, but are invaded by these waves; whoever is open and without defence is caught in them and tossed about.</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">All the other senses undergo a similar transformation. All that the ear listens to, reveals the totality of its sound body and sound significance and all the tones of its vibration and reveals also to the single and complete hearing the quality, the rhythmic energy, the soul of the sound and its expression of the one universal spirit. There is the same internality, the going of the sense into the depths of the sound and the finding there of that which informs it and extends it into unity with the harmony of all sound and no less with the harmony of all silence, so that the ear is always listening to the infinite in its heard expression and the voice of its silence.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 4 August 1929)</div>
+[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-supramental-sense#p12 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/24/the-supramental-sense#p12]
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/4-august-1929#p5 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/4-august-1929#p5]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
-== Habits ==
+= Disturbance of Silence =
-<div style="color:#000000;">Social habits are something terrible… when you understand that, you can look at yourself doing, objectivise yourself, laugh a little at all those multiple small bondages of habit, traditions, the education you have received, and then put the light, consciousness, aspiration for surrender to the Divine on these things, and try to receive the divine inspiration to do things as it's necessary, not according to habits, not according to one's vital impulses, not according to all the vital impulses and personal wills which one receives from others and which push him to do things which perhaps he would not have done without all that.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">This is true, altogether true, it is at the moment when all is silenced in order that man may become conscious of his origin that he, in his folly, in order to distract himself conceives or carries out the worst stupidities.</span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 20 July 1955)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 12 March 1951)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/12-march-1951#p48 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/12-march-1951#p48]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/20-july-1955#p9</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">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. </div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">Changing the character is what comes last. One must control bad habits, the old habits, for a very long time for them to drop off and the character to change… Your body, for instance, has certain reactions to cold, heat, hunger, and you are in the habit of having these reactions, and this habit has made a kind of formation in your physical nature, that is, a crease, a fixed crease of the body, and that's how it is. Formations are the result of habits.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 26 January 1955)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/26-january-1955#p13</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 21 April 1951)</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">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. </div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/21-april-1951#p7 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/21-april-1951#p7]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 5 February 1951)</div>
+<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/5-february-1951#p12</u></div>
-= Suffering and Role of Shadow =
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Man is the first animal on earth to be able to use articulate sounds. Indeed, he is very proud of this capacity and exercises it without moderation or discernment. The world is deafened with the sound of his words and sometimes one almost misses the harmonious silence of the plant kingdom.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-four-austerities-and-the-four-liberations#p34</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">For you are always under the illusion that pain belongs to you. This is not true. Pain is something thrust upon you. But in one case, you are open to the adverse forces you want to reject from yourself, and in the other you are not, you are already too far away from them to be affected by them any longer; and so, instead of feeling the negative side they represent, you feel only the positive side the Divine represents in the experience. It is the divine Grace which makes you progress, and with the divine Grace you feel the divine Joy.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-mind#p48</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 7 March 1956)</div>
+= Silence in the Supermental boat =
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/7-march-1956#p29 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/7-march-1956#p29]
-<div style="color:#000000;">And this is true even in the physical field. A lion sitting and looking at you always seems to be telling you, "Oh, how fidgety you are!" It looks at you with such a peaceful air of wisdom! And all its power, energy, physical strength are there, gathered, collected, concentrated and―without a shadow of agitation―ready for action when the order is given. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/19-february-1958#p32 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/19-february-1958#p32]
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 17 October 1956)</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/17-october-1956#p19 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/17-october-1956#p19]
+= Practices of Silence =
-<div style="color:#000000;">Indeed, it is better not to care at all about what others think of you, whether it is good or bad. But in any case, before reaching this stage, it would be less ridiculous to try to find out the impression you make on others simply by taking them as a mirror in which you see your reflection more exactly than in your own consciousness which is always over-indulgent to all your weakness, blindness, passions, ignorance.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 14 November 1956)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Silence... Oh! It is better to practise it than to talk about it.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-111-112#p4</u></span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/14-november-1956#p24 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/14-november-1956#p24]
+== General practices ==
-= Mirroring =
-== Self-Observation ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">But if you want to know things as they really are, you must be absolutely like a mirror: silent, peaceful, immobile, impartial, without preferences and in a state of total receptivity. And if you are like that, you will begin to see that there are many things you are not aware of, but which are there, and which will start becoming active in you. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Practise silence of mind, it gives power of understanding.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-mind#p85</u></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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-mind#p89</u></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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-mind#p92</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 19 May 1954)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is in quietness, peace and silence that the spiritual forces act.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/quiet#p26</u></span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/19-may-1954#p15 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/19-may-1954#p15]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">A respectful and modest silence is the only attitude befitting a disciple.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/control-of-speech#p39 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/control-of-speech#p39]
-<div style="color:#000000;">But the best way of listening is this. It is to be like a still mirror and very concentrated, very silent.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">They [small Buddhist sects</span><span style="background-color:#f5f5f5;color:#333333;">}</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">sit down for a few hours in the day and even at night and quiet their mind. This is for them the key to all realisation—a quiet mind that knows how to keep quiet for hours together without roving. You must not believe however that it is a very easy thing to do, but they have no other object. </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''They do not concentrate upon any thought, they do not try to understand better, to know more, nothing of the kind; for them the only way is to have a quiet mind and sometimes they pass through years and years of effort before they arrive at this result—to silence the mind, to keep it absolutely silent and still'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"><nowiki>; for, as it is said here in the Dhammapada, if the mind is unbalanced, then this constant movement of ideas following one another, sometimes without any order, ideas contradicting and opposing each other, ideas that speculate on things, all that jostles about in the head, makes holes in the roof, as it were. So through these holes all undesirable movements enter into the consciousness, as water enters into a house with a leaky roof.</nowiki></span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/conjugate-verses#p87 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/conjugate-verses#p87]
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 20 October 1954)</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/20-october-1954#p65 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/20-october-1954#p65]
+<div style="color:#000000;">This work of mental purification should be done very regularly in order to secure a complete control over one’s actions.</div>
+<div style="margin-left:0cm;margin-right:0cm;"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">For this purpose, it is good to </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''set apart some time every day when one can quietly go over one's thoughts and put one's synthesis in order'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">. Once the habit is acquired, you can maintain control over your thoughts even during work and action, allowing only those which are useful for what you are doing to come to the surface. Particularly, if you have continued to cultivate the power of concentration and attention, only the thoughts that are needed will be allowed to enter the active external consciousness </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">and they then become all the more dynamic and effective. And if, in the intensity of concentration, it becomes necessary not to think at all, all mental vibration can be stilled and an almost total silence secured. In this silence one can gradually open to the higher regions of the mind and learn to record the inspirations that come from there.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mental-education#p19 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mental-education#p19]</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">...the true way is that you should be like a mirror and reflect faithfully whatever you see. Don't give your personal colouring and be quite dispassionate. If there is something wrong in the mirror itself, then I can correct it. But you must try to make sure that your mirror does not distort the picture.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, Jan 1971)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/concentration-and-meditation#p24 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/concentration-and-meditation#p24]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/general-2#p46 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/general-2#p46]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is quite certain that to create absolute silence is of all things the most difficult, for many things of which one was not aware, become enormous! There were all kinds of suggestion, movements, thoughts, formations which went on as though automatically in the outer consciousness, almost outside the consciousness, on the frontiers of consciousness; and as soon as one wants to be absolutely silent, one becomes aware of all these things which go on moving, moving, moving and make a lot of noise and prevent you from being silent. That is why it is better to remain very quiet, very calm and at the same time </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''very attentive to something which is above you and to which you aspire,'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">and if there is this kind of noise passing like that around you (Mother moves her hands around her head), not to pay attention, not to look, not to heed it. If there are thoughts which go round and round and round like this (gestures), which come and go, do not look, do not pay attention, but concentrate upwards in a great aspiration which one may even formulate—because often it helps the concentration—towards the light, the peace, the quietude, towards a kind of inner impassiveness, so that the concentration may be strong enough for you not to attend to all that continues to whirl about all around. But if suddenly you say, "Ah, there's some noise! Oh, here is a thought!", then it is finished. You will never succeed in being quiet. Have you never seen those people who try to stop a quarrel by shouting still louder than the ones who are quarrelling? Well, it is something like that. (</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">''Mother laughs''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">.)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/8-september-1954#p32</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">As when one goes on the discovery of one's inner being, of all the different parts of one's being, one very often has the feeling that one is entering deep into a hall or room, and according to the colour, the atmosphere, the things it contains, one has a very clear perception of the part of the being one is visiting. And then, one can go from one room to another, open doors and go into deeper and deeper rooms each of which has its own character.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 17 August 1955)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/interactions-with-others-and-the-practice-of-yoga#p100</u></span>
-<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/17-august-1955#p9</u></div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">First condition, know how to keep silent. And not only keep your tongue quiet, but silence </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">your mind, keep the head silent. If you wish to have a true, sincere experience upon which you can build, you must know how to be silent, otherwise you have nothing but what you fabricate yourself, which is equivalent to zero. All that one can say is, "Heavens, what a fashioner my mind is!" (The Mother, 19 March 1951)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/19-march-1951#p34 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/19-march-1951#p34]
-<div style="color:#000000;">In the light of this perfected consciousness, things appear as they are and not as they want to appear. Your consciousness becomes a screen or mirror; but this is when you are in a state of contemplation, a mere observer; when you are active, it is like a searchlight.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p74</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 30 June 1929)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The difficulty is that the things in the atmosphere come in even if one does not speak with people. There are always mind waves moving about. It is a mastery that has to be developed, beginning with a power of silence, exclusion, non-response.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p75</u></span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/30-june-1929#p7 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/30-june-1929#p7]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The mind must learn to be silent—remain calm, attentive, without making a noise. If you try to silence your mind directly, it is a hard job, almost impossible; for the most material part of the mind never stops its activity—it goes on and on like a non-stop recording machine. It repeats all that it records and unless there is a switch to stop it, it continues and continues indefinitely. If, on the other hand, you manage to </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''shift your consciousness into a higher domain'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">, above the ordinary mind, this opening to the Light calms the mind, it does not stir any longer, and the mental silence so obtained can become constant. Once you enter into this domain, you may very well never come out of it—the external mind always remains calm.</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 8 March 1951)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/8-march-1951#p4</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">By closely observing your own character, become aware of what needs to be transformed in order to achieve the ideal condition. Then set to work sincerely, observing your inner as well as your outer movements. And each time you discover something that contradicts the ideal you have set for yourself, make an effort to correct it. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/experiences-of-the-self-the-one-and-the-infinite#p25</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 1 December 1971)</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/1-december-1971#p2 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/1-december-1971#p2]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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 not, for instance, only by an effort of the mind itself to get clear of all intrusive emotion or passion, to quiet its own characteristic vibrations, to resist the obscuring fumes of a physical inertia which brings about a sleep or a torpor of the mind instead of its wakeful silence, that the thing can be </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">done. This is indeed an ordinary process of the Yogic path of knowledge; but the same end can be brought about or automatically happen by other processes—for instance, by the descent from above of a great spiritual stillness imposing silence on the mind and heart, on the life stimuli, on the physical reflexes. A sudden descent of this kind or a series of descents accumulative in force and efficacy is a well-known phenomenon of spiritual experience. Or again one may start a mental process of one kind or another for the purpose which would normally mean a long labour and yet may pull down or be seized midway, or even at the outset, by an overmind influx, a rapid intervention or manifestation of the higher Silence, with an effect sudden, instantaneous, out of all proportion to the means used at the beginning. One commences with a method, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''but the work is taken up by a Grace from above, by a response from That to which one aspires '''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">or by an irruption of the infinitudes of the Spirit. It was in this last way that I myself came by the mind's absolute silence, unimaginable to me before I had the actual experience.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/philosophical-thought-and-yoga#p19</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">Mind predominates. Everything proceeds from mind. If a man speaks or acts with a purified mind, happiness accompanies him as closely as his inseparable shadow. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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!</span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">6 Sep 1957</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 19 May 1954)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/19-may-1954#p45</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/conjugate-verses#p10</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-462-463#p3</u></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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/study#p88</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">What we call our consciousness is this original Consciousness reflected in a somewhat foggy mirror (sometimes very foggy, sometimes very deformed), a reflection in the individual mirror. Then through this reflection, if we go back slowly to the origin of what is reflected, we can enter into contact with the Consciousness—the True Consciousness.</div>
+== Sri Aurobindo’s Silence ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 22 March 1951)</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/22-march-1951#p10 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/22-march-1951#p10]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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; </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''I flung them away before they could enter and take hold of the brain'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/thought-and-knowledge#p9</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">If in your mind you go over the various movements and reactions of the day like one repeating indefinitely the same thing, you will not progress. If this reviewing is to make you progress, you must find something within you in whose light you yourself can be your own judge, something which represents for you the best part of yourself, which has some light, some goodwill and which precisely is in love with progress.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 15 January 1951)</div>
+== Meditating in Silence ==
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/15-january-1951#p4 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/15-january-1951#p4]
-<div style="color:#000000;">But before one reaches a higher state of consciousness, there is a stage where one can develop in oneself the faculty of reason a clear, precise, logical reason, sufficiently objective in its vision of things. And when one has developed this reason—well, all impulses, feelings, desires, all disturbances can be put in the presence of this reason and that makes you reasonable. Most people, when something troubles them, become very unreasonable.</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">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.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 20 January 1951)</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 13 May 1953)</div>
-<span style="background-color:#ffd966;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/20-january-1951#p20 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/20-january-1951#p20]
+<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/13-may-1953#p5</u></div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">But to rise above the mental consciousness, not into a higher speculative mind, but far beyond all mental movements is not an easy thing.</span><span style="background-color:#f1c232;color:#000000;"> </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">That is, instead of being in a state of tension, instead of making a tremendous effort to silence the inner machine and be able to </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''concentrate your thought upon what you want, when you do it quite simply, naturally, without effort, automatically'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">, and you decide to meditate for some reason or other, what you want to see, learn or know remains in your consciousness and all the rest disappears as by a miracle; everything falls quiet in you, all your being becomes silent, your nerves are altogether soothed, your </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">consciousness is wholly concentrated—naturally, spontaneously—and you enter with an intense delight into a yet more intense contemplation.</span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 27 July 1955)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 17 February 1951)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/17-february-1951#p36</u></span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/27-july-1955#p6 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/27-july-1955#p6]
+== Silence and Progress ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">It is the same for sports, for games; you can observe this easily, there is always a flagging of the consciousness when accidents occur, or a lack of attention, a little absent-mindedness; suddenly one thinks of something else, the attention is drawn elsewhere—one is not fully conscious of what one is doing and the accident happens.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 2 April 1951)</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/2-april-1951#p6</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Silence: the ideal condition for progress.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p1</u></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 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p3]
-<div style="color:#000000;">Even the man of knowledge acts according to his own nature.... As a fire is covered over by smoke and a mirror by dust, as an embryo is wrapped by the amnion, so knowledge is enveloped by desire.</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">There is a greater power in silence than in words, however forceful. The greatest transformations have been achieved in the silence of concentration.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 4 April 1956)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 2 November 1970)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/2-november-1970#p1 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/2-november-1970#p1]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/4-april-1956#p17</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">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</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">...they should have developed in their character and action a great deal of patience, endurance, kindness, understanding and impartiality. They should have no likes or dislikes, no attractions or repulsions.</div>
+<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/22/the-ascent-towards-supermind#p26</u></div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">5 July 1961</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/correspondence#p19 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/correspondence#p19]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">You see, for those who are</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''sincere,'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">sincere and very—how to put it?—v</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''ery straight in their aspiration'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">, 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. </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 11 November 1967)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/11-november-1967#p159 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/11-november-1967#p159]
-<div style="color:#000000;">And in fact this is what happens most often. When you are able to see in the consciousness of others the result of what you have tried to communicate, it always gives you the feeling of... you know what distorting mirrors are?</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 5 March 1958)</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">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. </div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/5-march-1958#p14 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/5-march-1958#p14]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 20 October, 1954)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/20-october-1954#p71</u></span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The peace and </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;">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.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/peace#p7 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/peace#p7]
-<div style="color:#000000;">When you have a question to solve, whatever it may be, usually you concentrate.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 23 July 1958)</div>
+== Connecting to Divine ==
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/23-july-1958#p9 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/23-july-1958#p9]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;">. </u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">  It is a discipline to be followed. For a long time one may try and not succeed, but as soon as one succeeds in making a "mirror", still and attentive, one always obtains a result, not necessarily with a precise form of thought but always with the sensations of a light coming from above. And then, if one can receive this light coming from above without entering immediately into a whirl of activity, receive it in calm and silence and let it penetrate deep into the being, then after a while it expresses itself either as a luminous thought or as a very precise indication here (Mother indicates the heart), in this other centre. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is in the silence of complete identification with the Divine that true understanding is obtained.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p24</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 23 July 1958)</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/23-july-1958#p10 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/23-july-1958#p10]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">In peace and inner silence you will more and more become conscious of the constant Presence.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/peace#p18 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/peace#p18]
-<div style="color:#000000;">Even the most rebellious are slaves, because the only thing that liberates you is precisely the act of passing behind the veil and discovering what lies beyond it. Once you have seen, you know who you are and once you have established your true identity, you have the key to the true transformation.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">None can say to the Divine, "I have known Thee", and yet all carry Him in themselves, and in the silence of their soul can hear the echo of the Divine's voice.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/relationship-with-the-divine#p6 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/relationship-with-the-divine#p6]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">24 October 1958</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-7#p10 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-7#p10]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">In the perfect silence of the contemplation all widens to infinity, and in the perfect peace of that silence the Divine appears in the resplendent glory of His light.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p14</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">Do not try to appear virtuous. See how much you are united, one with everything that is anti-divine. Take your share of the burden, accept yourselves to be impure and false and in that way you will be able to take up the Shadow and offer it. And in so far as you are capable of taking it and offering it, then things will change.</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">Feeling alone in the midst of human beings is the sign that you are beginning to feel the need to find in your own being contact with the Divine Presence. So you must concentrate in silence and try to enter deep within to discover the Divine Presence in the depths of your consciousness, beyond all mental activity. </div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">21 January 1962</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 16 December 1971)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/16-december-1971#p1</u></span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-70#p17 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-70#p17]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+== Surrender in Silence ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">And so what is noteworthy is that the vibration, what one might call the quality of the vibration that comes from the Lord, is constructive—it builds and it is peaceful and luminous; while the other vibration of desire, or any similar vibration, complicates, destroys, confuses and twists things—confuses and distorts them, twists them. And this takes away the light; it produces a greyness, which can be intensified by violent movements into very dark shadows. But even when there is no passion, when passion does not intervene, it is like that. The physical reality has become nothing but a field of vibrations that mingle and unfortunately also clash and conflict with one another; and the clash, the conflict is a climax of this kind of turmoil and disorder and confusion created by certain vibrations which are in fact vibrations of ignorance—because we do not know. They are vibrations of ignorance and they are too small, too narrow, too limited—too short. The problem is no longer perceived from a psychological point of view at all; there are only vibrations. </div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">4 November 1963</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-95#p7</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Above all words, above all thoughts in the luminous silence of an aspiring faith </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''give yourself totally, unreservedly, absolutely to the Supreme Lord'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">of all existences and He will do of you what He wants you to be.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/self-giving#p39 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/self-giving#p39]
-== Psychic Consciousness and Mirroring ==
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''Silence all outside noise, aspire for the Divine's help'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"><nowiki>; open integrally to it then it comes and surrender to its action, and it will effectively bring about your transformation.</nowiki></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/transformation#p29</u></span>
+== Silent Aspiration ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">If only you were an experienced observer, if you could tell what goes on in a person, simply by looking into his eyes!... It is said the eyes are the mirror of the soul.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 8 January 1951)</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/8-january-1951#p25 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/8-january-1951#p25]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">In silence, the consciousness grows. It aspires to know You more and more perfectly. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 3 April 1972)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/3-april-1972#p1</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">Your normal self is merely a shadow of your true individuality which you will realise only when this normal individual which is differently poised at different times, now in the mental, then in the vital, at other times in the physical, gets into contact with the psychic and feels it as its real being. Then you will be one, nothing will shake or disturb you, you will make steady and lasting progress and be above such petty things as greed for food. </div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 9 August 1929)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">To </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''make yourself blank in meditation'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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. &nbsp;(The Mother, 23 June, 1929)</span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/the-ordinary-life-and-the-true-soul#p5 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/the-ordinary-life-and-the-true-soul#p5]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/23-june-1929#p21 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/23-june-1929#p21]
-<div style="color:#000000;">You can be a different person at different moments in your life. I know people who took decisions, had a strong will, knew what they wanted and prepared to do it. Then there was a little reversal in the being; another part came up and spoilt all the work in ten minutes.Hence it is evident that it is very important to become aware of the psychic being; one must have a kind of signpost or a mirror in which all things are reflected and show themselves as they truly are.</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''An aspiration for all that is essentially true, real, perfect'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">. And this aspiration must be free from words, simply a silent attitude, but extremely intense and unvacillating. Not a word must be allowed the right to enter there and disturb it. It must be like a column of vibrations of aspiration, which nothing can touch—and in total silence—and therein, if something comes down, what descends (and will be clothed in words in your mind and in sounds in your mouth) will be the Word. But nothing less than this will do.</span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 1 April 1953)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 7 April 1954)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/7-april-1954#p32</u></span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/1-april-1953#p8 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/1-april-1953#p8]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">''How can one silence the mind, remain quiet, and at the same time have an aspiration, an intensity or a widening? Because as soon as one aspires, isn't it the mind that aspires?''</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">Psychic memories have a very special character and a wonderful intensity. But that cannot be narrated in this way… But if at the time of waking up you are not in a hurry, you are not obliged to leave your bed, on the contrary you can remain there as long as you wish, you need not even open your eyes; you keep your head exactly where it was and you make yourself like a tranquil mirror within and concentrate there. You catch just a tiny end of the tail of your dream. You catch it and start pulling gently, without stirring in the least. You begin pulling quite gently, and then first one part comes, a little later another. You go backward; the last comes up first. Everything goes backward, slowly, and suddenly the whole dream reappears.</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">No; aspiration, as well as widening and intensity, comes from the heart, the emotional centre, the door of the psychic or rather the door leading to the psychic.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 6 May 1953)</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/6-may-1953#p10 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/6-may-1953#p10]
+<div style="color:#000000;">The mind by its nature is curious and interested; it sees, it observes, it tries to understand and explain; and with all this activity, it disturbs the experience and diminishes its intensity and force.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">There is the capacity for a direct vision of things. It is like a mirror in which all things are reflected, whatever they may be. </div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">On the other hand, the more quiet and silent the mind is, the more can aspiration rise up from the depths of the heart in the fullness of its ardour.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 27 January 1954)</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 17 September 1959)</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/27-january-1954#p36 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/27-january-1954#p36]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/17-september-1959#p2 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/17-september-1959#p2]
-<div style="color:#000000;">It is not the same thing in everyone; in each one it is different. It is the point in his nature or character through which he can touch the psychic and where he can receive the psychic influence. </div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">If you can relax and feel at ease, it will be very good; if you can enter into the silence, that will be perfect. Every day we shall begin with the prayer: "Grant that I may become conscious of Your presence"; and together we shall aspire for a moment in the silence and ardour of our aspiration. </div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 28 December 1955)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 10 March 1972)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/10-march-1972#p3</u></span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/28-december-1955#p8 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/28-december-1955#p8]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+== Establishing Silence ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">If you have the good sense and intelligence to do this each time you are shocked by another person's behaviour, you will realise that in life your relations with others are like a mirror which is presented to you so that you can see more easily and clearly the weaknesses you carry within you… And the best way to the true attitude is simply to say, "All those around me, all the circumstances of my life, all the people near me, are a mirror held up to me by the Divine Consciousness to show me the progress I must make. Everything that shocks me in others means a work I have to do in myself." </div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, </span><span style="background-color:#ffffff;color:#333333;">7 November 1958</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">''How can we establish a settled peace and silence in the mind?''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(After a </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''silence'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">) I mean that this exclusiveness is a habit. However, when one has done a little yoga seriously, one knows very well that one can think here (Mother shows the centre of the forehead between the eyebrows, then the right side, then the left) one can think here, one can think here, one can think in front and, as I was saying just now, one can think much higher—up but naturally, one thinks that all thought-phenomena, concentration, are produced in the brain—and when one </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''thinks up above, here (Mother shows the space above the head), one thinks much better than when one thinks here'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">. It is only that one has never tried to do otherwise. Not "never tried", there are quite a number of people who have tried and have succeeded.</span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-8#p8 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/10/aphorism-8#p8]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 8 September 1954)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/8-september-1954#p55</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">  </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Only, when there is the peace and the mental silence, the vital mind tries to rush in and occupy the place or else the mechanical mind tries to raise up for the same purpose its round of trivial habitual thoughts. What the sadhaka has to do is t</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''o be careful to reject and hush these outsiders'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">, so that during the meditation at least the peace and quietude of the mind and vital may be complete. This can be done best if you keep a strong and silent will. That will is the will of the Purusha behind the mind; when the mind is at peace, when it is silent one can become aware of the Purusha, silent also, separate from the action of the nature.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p15</u></span>
-= Recommended Practices for Transformation of the Shadow =
+== Silent self-observation ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">The greatest obstacle to the transformation of one's own character is hypocrisy. If you always keep this in mind when dealing with a child, you can do him a lot of good. Of course, you must not sermonise or lecture him, etc. You should simply make him understand that there is a nobility in the being, a great purity, a great love of beauty, which is so powerful that even the most wicked and criminal people are forced to acknowledge a truly beautiful or heroic or selfless act. </div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 6 January 1951)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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. </span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/6-january-1951#p28 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/6-january-1951#p28]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 20 January 1951)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/20-january-1951#p23</u></span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''Thus a division is created between the mind that thinks and wills and the mind that observes and the Purusha becomes the witness only;'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">he sees, he understands the process and laws of his thought, but detaches himself from it. Then as the master of the sanction he withdraws his past sanction from the tangle of the mental undercurrent and the reasoning intellect and causes both to cease from their importunities. He becomes liberated from subjection to the thinking mind and capable of the utter silence.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/23/the-release-from-the-heart-and-the-mind#p9</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The teacher should not be a book that is read aloud, the same for everyone, no matter what his nature and character. The first duty of the teacher is to help the student to know himself and to discover what he is capable of doing.</span><span style="background-color:#ffe599;color:#000000;"> </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is quite possible for thoughts to pass without disturbing the silence—but for that you must be perfectly detached from the thoughts and indifferent to them.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p4 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/silence#p4]
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">15 January 1972</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/correspondence#p184 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/correspondence#p184]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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. Silence is more than quietude; it can be gained by banishing thought altogether from the inner mind keeping it voiceless or quite outside; but more easily it is established by a descent from above—one feels it coming down, entering and occupying, or surrounding the personal consciousness which then tends to merge itself in the vast impersonal silence.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/quiet-and-calm#p36</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">This is perceived more easily when one is able to silence one's mind, hold it still and attentive, arresting its usual functioning, as if the mind were changed into a kind of mirror turned towards a higher faculty in a sustained and silent attention. That too one can learn to do. One must learn to do it, it is a necessary discipline.</div>
+== Communicating in Silence ==
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">23 July 1958</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/23-july-1958#p8 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/23-july-1958#p8]
+<div style="color:#000000;">Listen in a total silence of your whole being—mental, vital and physical.</div>
-= Yogic Discipline and Transformation of the Shadow =
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 6 July 1933)</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/6-july-1933#p6 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/6-july-1933#p6]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">We sat together in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the company of our soul, and we witnessed the gates of Eternity opening wide before us.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p20 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/silence#p20]
-<div style="color:#000000;">Here too yogic discipline will come to our aid by helping us to build characters of such nobility that they can become instruments of the truth.</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">November 1949</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">For it is one of the powers of this inner consciousness to bring about what it sees to be the right thing by simply communicating in entire silence to the consciousness of another. That is the true way of acting—through the power of the inner consciousness, its knowledge, vision and will.</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/correct-judgment#p6 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/correct-judgment#p6]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p44 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/the-inward-movement#p44]
-<div style="color:#000000;">… let us say a change in their character or a change in the circumstances or a set of things—and then, they want it at once; and as this usually does not happen all at once, they pull it down from above. This is what he calls "clutching". They seize it, pull it towards themselves. But in this way one has neither the real thing nor the true movement. One can only have an imitation of the true thing. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">There are some who have the flow of speech by nature and those who are very vital cannot do without it. But the latter case (not being able to do without it) is obviously a disability from the spiritual point of view. There are also certain stages in the sadhana when one has to go inward and silence is at that time very necessary while </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''unnecessary speech becomes a dispersion of the energies'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">or externalises the consciousness. It is especially this chat for chat's sake tendency that has to be overcome.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p8 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p8]
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 8 December 1954)</div>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/8-december-1954#p14 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/8-december-1954#p14]
+<div style="color:#000000;">If you want to be an instrument of the Truth, you must always speak the truth and not falsehood. But this does not mean that you must tell everything to everybody. To conceal the truth by silence or refusal to speak is permissible, because the truth may be misunderstood or misused by those who are not prepared for it or who are opposed to it—it may even be made a starting point for distortion or sheer falsehood. But to speak falsehood is another matter. Even in jest it should be avoided, because it tends to lower the consciousness.</div>
+[http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p58 http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p58]
-<div style="color:#000000;">But you have never noticed that it is different? For example, your physical consciousness or your subtle physical consciousness, your vital consciousness or the consciousness of your higher or lower vital, your psychic consciousness, your mental consciousness, each one is completely different! So when you sleep you have one consciousness, and when you are awake you have another. In your waking state you look at things projected outside you, in your sleep state you see them interiorised. So it is as though in one case you were pushed altogether outside yourself, in front, and in the other it is as though you were looking at yourself in an inner mirror. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother, 27 February 1955)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/speech-and-yoga#p70</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">So long as you have to draw your understanding from the forms of words, you are likely to fall into much confusion about the true sense; but if in a silence of your mind you can rise into the world from which ideas descend to take form, at once the real understanding comes. If you are to be sure of understanding one another, you must be able to understand in silence. There is a condition in which your minds are so well attuned and harmonised together that one perceives the thought of the other without any necessity of words. But if there is not this attunement, there will always be some deformation of your meaning, because to what you speak the other mind supplies its own significance. I use a word in a certain sense or shade of its sense; you are accustomed to put into it another sense or shade. Then, evidently, you will understand, not my exact meaning in it, but what the word means to you. This is true not of speech only, but of reading also. If you want to </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''understand a book with a deep teaching in it, you must be able to read it in the mind's silence;'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">you must wait and let the expression go deep inside you into the region where words are no more and from there come slowly back to your exterior consciousness and its surface understanding. But if you let the words jump at your external mind and try </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">to adapt and adjust the two, you will have entirely missed their real sense and power. There can be no perfect understanding unless you are in union with the unexpressed mind that is behind the centre of expression.</span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/27-april-1955#p31 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/27-april-1955#p31]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 26 May 1929)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/26-may-1929#p21</u></span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is possible. Perhaps the one who is silent will understand the other who is not!... But when there is this full accord, even if it is not permanent, when you are with someone and follow a thought far enough to come out of the external agitation, if the other too has followed the same thought, you may find yourselves suddenly agreeing without having spoken or made any effort towards that. Generally the silence comes to both at the same time or almost the same time—it is as though you slid into the silence. Of course, it may happen also that one continues to make a noise in his head, while the other has stopped, but the one who has stopped has a much greater chance of understanding what is happening to the other! (The Mother, 19 March 1951)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/19-march-1951#p20</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">I think it is the ego that makes each one a separate being, in all possible ways. It is the ego which gives the sense of being a person separate from others. It is certainly the ego which gives you the sense of the "I", "I am", "I want", "I do", "I exist", even the very famous "I think therefore I am" which is... I am sorry but I think it is a stupidity—but still it is a celebrated stupidity—well, this too is the ego. What gives you the impression that you are Manoj is the ego, and that you are altogether different from this one and that one; and what prevents your body from melting away like that, dissolving in a common mass of physical vibrations, is the ego; what gives you a definite form, a definite character, a separate consciousness, the sense that you exist in yourself, independently of all others, indeed, something like that; if one does not reflect, spontaneously one has the sense that even if the world disappeared, one would be there, one would remain what one is. This of course is the super-ego.</div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother,12 January 1955)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">If you are not alone and live with others, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''cultivate the habit of not externalising yourself constantly by speaking aloud'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">, and you will notice that little by little an inner understanding is established between yourself and others; you will then be able to communicate among yourselves with a minimum of words or even without any words at all. This outer silence is most favourable to inner peace, and with goodwill and a steadfast aspiration, you will be able to create a harmonious atmosphere which is very conducive to progress.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-four-austerities-and-the-four-liberations#p42</u></span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/12-january-1955#p24 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/12-january-1955#p24]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Control over what one says is more important than complete silence. The best is to learn to say what is useful in the most exact and true way possible.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/control-of-speech#p1</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">If only people did remain a little quiet before speaking, acting or writing, much trouble could be avoided. So many things are said uselessly, they bring misunderstandings and bad feelings which could have been saved with silence.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/control-of-speech#p6</u></span>
+== Concentrating together in Silence ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">In fact it is the sublimest of adventures, and if one has in him in the slightest the true spirit of adventure, it is worth risking all for all. But those who are afraid, who wonder, "Am I not going to let go the substance for the shadow?" according to the most banal proverb one can imagine, those who tell themselves, "Bah! After all it is better to profit by what one has than to risk losing everything, we don't know what is going to happen tomorrow, let us take precautions"... unfortunately this is very widespread, extremely widespread... well, about those who are in this state of mind, I can assure you of one thing: that even when the thing occurs before their very nose, they will not perceive it. They will say, "It is good, in this way I won't regret anything." It is possible. But perhaps later they will; this we do not know. </div>
-<div style="color:#000000;">(The Mother,12 October 1955)</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/12-october-1955#p19</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/community-affairs#p144</u></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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/13/community-affairs#p146</u></span>
+== Silence in Education ==
-<div style="color:#000000;">"A divine life on earth need not be a thing apart and exclusive having nothing to do with the common earthly existence: it will take up human being and human life, transform what can be transformed, spiritualise whatever can be spiritualised, cast its influence on the rest and effectuate either a radical or an uplifting change, bring about a deeper communion between the universal and the individual, invade the ideal with the spiritual truth of which it is a luminous shadow and help to uplift into or towards a greater and higher existence.... It is obvious that if the Supermind is there and an order of supramental being is established as the leading principle in earth-nature, as mind is now the leading principle, but with a sureness, a complete government of the earthly existence, a capacity of transformation of all upon their level and within their natural boundaries of which the mind in its imperfection was not capable, an immense change of human life, even if it did not extend to transformation would be inevitable." </div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">7 August 1957</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/7-august-1957#p10 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/7-august-1957#p10]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/4-april-1956#p13</u></span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">"It may well be that the evolutionary urge would proceed to a change of the organs themselves in their material working and use and diminish greatly the need of their instrumentation and even of their existence. The centres in the subtle body, sūkṣma śarīra, of which one would become conscious and aware of all going on in it would pour their energies into material nerve and plexus and tissue and radiate them through the whole material body; all the physical life and its necessary activities in this new existence could be maintained and operated by these higher agencies in a freer and ampler way and by a less burdensome and restricting method. This might go so far that these organs might cease to be indispensable and even be felt as too obstructive: the central force might use them less and less and finally throw aside their use altogether. If that happened they might waste by atrophy, be reduced to an insignificant minimum or even disappear. The central force might substitute for them subtle organs of a very different character or, if anything material was needed, instruments that would be forms of dynamism or plastic transmitters rather than what we know as organs. This might well be part of a supreme total transformation of the body, though this too might not be final. To envisage such changes is to look far ahead and minds attached to the present form of things may be unable to give credence to their possibility. No such limits and no such impossibility of any necessary change can be imposed on the evolutionary urge.... What has to be overpassed, whatever has no longer a use or is degraded, what has become unhelpful or retarding, can be discarded and dropped on the way. That has been evident in the history of the evolution of the body from its beginning in elementary forms to its most developed type, the human, there is no reason why this process should not intervene in the transition from the human into the divine body. For the manifestation or building of a divine body on earth there must be an initial transformation, the appearance of a new, a greater and more developed type, not a continuance with little modifications of the present physical form and its limited possibilities." </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It would be interesting to formulate or to elaborate a new method of teaching for children, to take them very young. It is easy when they are very young. We need people—oh! we would need remarkable teachers—who have, first, an ample enough documentation of what is known so as to be able to answer every question, and at the same time, at least the knowledge, if not the experience—the experience would be better—of the true intuitive intellectual attitude, and—naturally the capacity would be still more preferable—at least the knowledge that the true way of knowing is mental </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''silence'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">, an attentive </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;">turned towards the truer Consciousness, and the capacity to receive what comes from there. The best would be to have this capacity; at least, it should be explained that it is the true thing—a sort of demonstration—and that it works not only from the point of view of what must be learned, of the whole domain of knowledge, but also of the whole domain of what should be done: the capacity to receive the exact indication of how to do it; and as you go on, it changes into a very clear perception of what must be done, and a precise indication of when it must be done. At least the children, as soon as they have the capacity to think—it starts at the age of seven, but at about fourteen or fifteen it is very clear—the children should be given little indications at the age of seven, a complete explanation at fourteen, of how to do it, and that it is the only way to be in relation with the deeper truth of things, and that all the rest is a more or less clumsy mental approximation to something that can be known directly.</span>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">10 July 1957</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 5 April 1967)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/5-april-1967#p24</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"><nowiki>----------------------</nowiki></span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/10-july-1957#p1 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/10-july-1957#p1]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">''Mother, now there is one question, another important question. You have often told us that it is only in the inner silence that we can find the true answer to a question. What is the best way to make the children discover how this silence is established? Is this how consciousness is substituted for knowledge?''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">You see, in this system of classes where everyone is sitting down, the teacher is there and they have a limited time in which to do the work, it is not possible. It is only</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''if you have absolute freedom that you can establish the silence'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">when you need to be silent. But when all the students are in class and the teacher is in class... when the teacher is establishing the silence in himself, all the students... then it is not possible. He can establish the silence at home, at night, the day before, to prepare himself for the next day, but you cannot... It cannot be an immediate rule. Naturally, when you are at the very top of the scale and you are used to keeping your mind absolutely silent, you cannot help it; but you have not reached that point, none of you. So it is better not to speak about it. So I think that during the... Especially with this system, classes with a fixed time, with a fixed number of students, with a fixed teacher, and a fixed subject... you must be active while you are there. </span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 11 November 1967)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/11-november-1967#p149</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Yes, there, the morning work, like the work they do there, "Vers la Perfection"... They can very well do that: remain silent, concentrated for a moment, </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''silence all that, everything that is noisy inside,'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">like that, and wait. In the morning, they can do that. No, I mean, when you have an hour's class, or three-quarters of an hour's class with... all together with the teacher... you have to keep yourselves busy. It would be amusing if for three-quarters of an hour everyone could stay... (laughter). </span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">There. This is the situation. It has grown considerably worse since the last war; it grows worse year by year, and one finds oneself in such a ridiculous situation that, unfortunately, as one is at the end of one's resources, to simplify what has been made so complicated, there is an idea in the earth-atmosphere—an idea which might be called preposterous, but unhappily it is much worse than preposterous, it is catastrophic—the idea that if there were a great upheaval, perhaps it would be better afterwards.... One is so jammed between prohibitions, impossibilities, interdictions, rules, the complications of every second, that one feels stifled and really gets the admirable idea that if everything were demolished perhaps it would be better afterwards!.... It is in the air. And all the governments have put themselves in such impossible conditions; they have become so tied up that it seems to them they will have to break everything to be able to move forward.... (Silence) This is unfortunately a little more than a possibility, it is a very serious threat. And it is not quite certain that life will not be made still more impossible because one feels incapable of emerging from the chaos—the chaos of complications—in which humanity has put itself. It is like the shadow—but unfortunately a very active shadow—of the new hope which has sprung up in the human consciousness, a hope and a need for something more harmonious; and the need becomes so much more acute as life, as it is at present organised, becomes more and more contrary to it. The two opposites are facing each other with such intensity that one can expect something like an explosion....</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 11 November 1967)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/11-november-1967#p154</u></span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">One thing could be done once, at least once: you set a subject, like that, from the course of subjects, you set it and tell them, "For a quarter of an hour we shall remain silent, silent; no noise, no one should make any noise. We shall remain silent for a quarter of an hour. For a quarter of an hour try to remain completely silent, still and attentive, and then we shall see in a quarter of an hour what comes out of it." You can reduce it to five minutes to begin with, three minutes, two minutes, it doesn't matter. A quarter of an hour is a lot, but you should do... try that... see. Some of them will start to fidget. Very few children, perhaps, know how to keep still; or else they fall asleep—but it doesn't matter if they fall asleep. You could try that at least once, see what happens: "Let's see! Who will answer my question after ten minutes' silence? And not ten minutes which you will spend trying to get hold of everything you may know mentally about the subject, no, no—ten minutes during which you will be just like this, blank, still, silent, attentive... attentive and silent."</span>
-<div style="color:#000000;"> (The Mother,7 August 1957)</div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 11 November 1967)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/11-november-1967#p156</u></span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/7-august-1957#p17 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/7-august-1957#p17]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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:</span>
-<div style="color:#000000;">Learn steadiness of character, perseverance. Be worthy of trust so as to become one day the true disciple of that great Soul."</div>
+<div style="color:#000000;">“Mother is always here amongst us to help us and guide us.”</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">22 March 1957</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
-[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/22-march-1957#p19 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/22-march-1957#p19]<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">  </span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">Most of the children will understand, and some are capable of feeling.</div>
+[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mothers-action-in-a-class-of-children-aged-seven-to-nine#p8 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mothers-action-in-a-class-of-children-aged-seven-to-nine#p8]
-<div style="color:#000000;">Here too yogic discipline will come to our aid by helping us to build characters of such nobility that they can become instruments of the truth.</div>
-<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother,</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#333333;">November 1949</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">)</span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mothers-action-in-a-class-of-children-aged-seven-to-nine#p24</u></span>
-<div style="color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/correct-judgment#p6</u></div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">A minimum 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;">is necessary. I know that the most undisciplined children are usually the most intelligent. But to be tamed they must feel the pressure of an intelligence that is more powerful than their own. And for that, one must be able not to come down to their level, and above all know how to remain unaffected by what they do. In fact, it is a yogic problem.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mothers-action-in-a-class-of-children-aged-ten-to-eleven#p4 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mothers-action-in-a-class-of-children-aged-ten-to-eleven#p4]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It is true that the guru himself is subject to the same rule of silence with regard to what concerns him personally. In Nature everything is in movement; thus, whatever does not move forward is bound to fall back. The guru must progress even as his disciples do, although his progress may not be on the same plane. And for him too, to speak about his experiences is not favourable: the greater part of the dynamic force for progress contained in the experience evaporates if it is put into words. But on the other hand, by explaining his experiences to his disciples, he greatly helps their understanding and consequently their progress. It is for him in his wisdom to know to what extent he can and ought to sacrifice the one to the other. It goes without saying that no boasting or vainglory should enter into his account, for the slightest vanity would make him no longer a guru but an imposter.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-four-austerities-and-the-four-liberations#p60</u></span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">And if you do not want your body to fail you, avoid wasting your energies in useless agitation. Whatever you do, do it in a quiet and composed poise. In peace and </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;">is the greatest strength.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/students#p16</u></span>
+== Resting in Silence ==
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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, because somewhere in its being there is not the assent to or participation in the peace and passivity. </span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">'''To be able often to rest, repose in all the being outspread in the silent Brahman is an indispensable thing for the Yogi'''</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">. 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.</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/30/variations-in-the-intensity-of-experience#p32</u></span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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.</span>[http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mental-education#p21 http://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/mental-education#p21]
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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. (The Mother, 31 August 1955)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/31-august-1955#p21</u></span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">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. (The Mother, 30 January 1939)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/30-january-1939#p8</u></span>
+<div style="color:#000000;">It is very difficult to put one's mind into repose. The majority of men get up very tired, more tired than when they went to sleep. One must learn how to quieten one's mind, make it completely blank, and then when one wakes up, one feels refreshed. One must relax the whole mind in the pure white silence, then one has the least number of dreams. </div>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">(The Mother, 22 April 1953)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/22-april-1953#p5</u></span>
+<span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">In any case one thing you can do in all security is, before going to sleep, to concentrate, relax all tension in the physical being, try... that is, in the body try so that the body lies like a soft rag on the bed, that it is no longer something with twitchings and cramps; to relax it completely as though it were a kind of thing like a rag. And then, the vital: to calm it, calm it as much as you can, make it as quiet, as peaceful as possible. And then the mind also—the mind, try to keep it like that, without any activity. You must put upon the brain the force of great peace, great quietude, of silence if possible, and not follow ideas actively, not make any effort, nothing, nothing; you must relax all movement there too, but relax it in a kind of silence and quietude as great as possible. (The Mother, 2 March 1955)</span><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#0066cc;"><u>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/2-march-1955#p10</u></span>

Difference between revisions of "Silence Compilation"