Chapter 20

Power of Silence

111 – Knowledge is a child with its achievements; for when it has found out something, it runs about the streets whooping and shouting; Wisdom conceals hers for a long time in a thoughtful and mighty silence.

112 – Science talks and behaves as if it had conquered all knowledge. Wisdom, as she walks, hears her solitary tread echoing on the margin of immeasurable Oceans. (Sri Aurobindo)

Silence… Oh! It is better to practise it than to talk about it.

It is an experience I had here, long ago: the difference between wanting to spread and make use of what one has learnt, immediately, and the contact with higher knowledge, where one remains as quiet as one can so that it can have a transforming effect. I have had the living experience of this – half a day of living experience – but now that seems old to me, old, far behind.

What is the power of this silence? When one rises above, one enters into a kind of great silence, that is frozen, that is everywhere; but what is the power of this silence? Does it do anything?

This is what people used to seek in the past when they wanted to escape from life. They would go into a trance, they would leave their body quite still and they would go within and they were perfectly happy. And with the Sannyasis who had them-selves buried alive it was like that. They said, “Now, I have finished my work” – their language was very impressive – “I have finished, I am entering into Samadhi” and they had themselves buried alive. They went into a room or something, and then it was closed and that was the end of it. And that is what happened: they went into a trance, and after some time, naturally, their body was dissolved and they were in peace.

But Sri Aurobindo says that this silence is powerful.

Powerful, yes.

Well, I would like to know exactly how it is powerful? Because one has the feeling that one could stay there for an eternity…

Not an eternity – Eternity.

… without anything changing.

No, because it is not manifested, it is outside the manifestation. But Sri Aurobindo wants us to bring it down here. That is the difficulty. And one must accept infirmity and even the appearance of imbecility, everything, and not one out of fifty million has the courage for that.

Chapter 21

Knowledge and Silence

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.

Chapter 22

Receptivity and Silence

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.

One knows what must be known, one sees what must be seen, and since what must be known and seen comes directly from the Supreme, it is Truth itself; and it completely eludes all notions of reason or folly. What is true is true – that is all. And one has to sink very low to wonder whether it is folly or reason.

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.

Chapter 23

Silence necessary to fully receive Experience

Things of this sort come to me more and more often and I jot them down on a piece of paper. It is always the same process, always. First of all, a kind of explosion, an explosion of truth-power – it is like a great, white fireworks display (Mother smiles), much more than a fireworks display! And it spins round and round (gesture above the head), it churns and churns; then there is the impression of an idea – but the idea is lower, it is like a covering; the idea contains its own sensation, it also brings a sensation the – sensation was there before, but without the idea, and so the sensation could not be defined. There is only one thing, it is always an explosion of luminous Power. And then, afterwards, if you look at it and remain very quiet – the head, especially, should keep quiet – everything becomes silent (motionless, upward gesture), then suddenly someone speaks inside the head – someone speaks. It is this explosion speaking. Then I take a pencil and paper and I write. But between what speaks and what writes there is still a little space to be crossed, so that when it is written down something up there is not satisfied. So I remain quiet a little longer – “No, not that word, this one” – sometimes it takes two days to become quite final. But those who are satisfied with the power of the experience make short work of this, and send out into the world sensational revelations that are distortions of the Truth.