Hymn to Silence
Silence is substance. The material world is made out of vibrating energy. But what is the energy made of ? No-thing: the empty vacuum of perfect Silence.
St. John of the Cross tells us that, "Silence is the first language of
God." Rumi declares, "When I am silent, I fall into the place where
everything is music." Ammaji adds, "In meditation, silence is the
Mother." And Anias Ninn: "I love your silences, they are like
mine."
Silence cannot be thought. Thinking a thought about silence is not silence. Of
course our silence should not suppress or negate thinking. But in the radiant
quietness of Truth, the veil of thought becomes transparent, and silence
outshines the mind. Then silence is freedom from thought.
I don't need freedom of speech nearly so much as I need freedom of Silence. Let
me liberate Silence from every shackle of shame. For true Silence is not repression
commanded by authority. That is not silence at all, but only a stifled
scream. True silence is the music of repose, which flows through all my
apparent boundaries, suffusing every particle of earth and flesh, the moon, the aura of
the day star. My quietness overflows the rim of the Milky Way.
Silence is the fertile womb of darkness, the causeless astonishment that
bubbles at the root of the cosmos. The silence of the invisible sap, odorless
yet permeating stem, leaf, petal and pollen with a fragrance of ecstasy. The
soft Silence of divine love, soaking through the edges of things, melting,
uniting them in Wholeness, without destroying their forms. Each form is but a
wave on the ocean of the Ineffable.
When I am truly awake, my flesh is the beehive, but Silence is the honey in
every cell. I can taste it, taste the golden void in each atom. Silence is the
glory of night, the luminous nectar of blackness, in whom the effervescent
stars suspend like sparkle in wine. Most abysmal of all is the Silence between
my thoughts. There, not in thought but intuition, is my true home. "Intereor
intimo mea: more intimate to me than I am to myself.” Silence, not thinking, is
the source of wisdom.
The oil pressed out and overflowing from matter is Silence, and matter is solidified Silence. Silence is
the eternity in each moment of time. Silence brings us into the heart of Now.
Silence is the soul of this breath, the muse of the universe, the essence of creation
prior to the Word. In the cavern of meditation, silence crystalizes into
diamond, more adamant than any fleeting quark or neutrino. For at the quantum
level of the cosmos, this world is a mist, ever vanishing, but the vacuum of
pure Silence is solid ground.
No need to seek or attain Silence. Just sink deeper into your heart, the center
that has no circumference, the Being that has no opposite. Here, in the
ineffable vastness beyond mind, dissolve into truth, and be wildered by
tranquility.
What is truth? This is exactly what Pontius Pilate asked Jesus at his trial. How did Jesus answer? He was silent. Truth is Silence. I cannot know the truth: I Am the truth. I let vibrations of Silence do the speaking. Now here is a meditation from 7th Century Syrian Saint, Isaac of Nineveh:
"Above
all things
love silence.
Out of your
silence
will arise something
that will draw you
into deeper silence.
If you practice this,
inexpressible light
will dawn
upon you."
The body is solidified Silence. As ice and vapor are two states of the same
water, so matter and consciousness are two states of the same Silence.
The world echoes Silence, yet Silence remains transcendent, ever-virgin, still. The 2nd Century Christian gnostic Valentinus wrote, "the real Virgin Mother is mystical eternal silence." How then can this mind return to the un-created?
The bridge
that leads back to Silence is grace, the grace of one already steeped and
drowned in Silence, one whose mind has dissolved in Silence, one whose body
vibrates with Silence, every atom saturated with transcendental bliss. This
is the Teacher, who whispers the Word of uncreated Silence to your heart. This
is what happens at “diksha,” initiation.
In Kali Yuga, no asana, no pranayam, no chant, no study of scripture, no
practice of tantra, no righteous moral conduct, can carry this agitated mind
over the noisy waves of confusion, back to Silence. The only raft that is
humble enough, subtle enough, yet powerful enough is the grace of the Name of
the Goddess. God is pure Silence (Shiva). When that Silence vibrates in waves
of energy, it becomes the dance of the Goddess (Shakti). Her vibration is the stuff of the universe. But at its subtlest level of manifestation, that
vibration is the mantra.
She
vibrates, She dances, She undulates through my spine. She is the song inside
the stillness at the source of my breath. Her Name is the secret energy that
awakened creation. Therefore her Name is the portal through which I return, following the stream of divine sound back to its fountainhead.
In Sanskrit, the word "mantra" consists of the root syllables
"man" meaning mind and "tra" meaning vehicle. From Sanskrit
we have the suffix, "tron" as in "electron," a vehicle for
electricity. Mantra is a vehicle for mind. The beautiful vibration of the
mantra's sound-energy settles and delights the contracted ego, dissolving its
confusion. The vibration of the mantra dispels the tension of the ego and allows
it to rest as silent unbounded awareness. When "I" am fully at rest, yet
fully awake, I Am no longer ego, but cosmic consciousness. We need not destroy the ego but expand it to its original nature, before it was contracted by fear, shame, and self-doubt.
The humbleness of the mantra is the humbleness of the Mother, growing softer, subtler, finer,
until it transcends the limits of sound and merges in divine Silence.
Then the meditator comes home to the source, led by the grace of the
one who pervades the cosmos as the transcendental witness to her own creation.
O Mother, your Name has merged with my ever-vanishing heartbeat, hearing whose
unstruck sound, I drown in the ineffable beauty of the poem that has not been
written, the music that has not been composed, the sacred pain of the artist
and the mystic, of all who sink in your abysmal love, and all who yearn to communicate
the unspeakable.
Your stillness trembles. Your Silence ululates the un-manifest, the pang of the
Logos before it is spoken, the Christ before incarnation. Your virgin womb is
an inward empyrean, empty and pure, yet teeming with virtual photons, quantum
electrons, pre-existent stars, the un-created energy of abundance. Even
physicists see this now! Your living Silence radiates the subnuclear particles
of my body, pulses atomic green into each clover blade, inflames the galaxies
whose light has not yet arrived as my future.
O Mother, I give thanks for the grace of your Name. O Guru Dev, I give thanks
for the grace of your whisper. For it is you who gifted me the mantra. Stunned
by the mystery of your Silence, I bow down. When I touch the earth, my forehead
shatters. The Milky Way pours from my marrow. Sparkling constellations, clouds, mountains, meadows and
forests, tender wrigglers through dark microbial loam,
spill forth from my astonished heart. I am no-thing but a hollow wound, a
conduit for your creation. O Kali Ma, my soul is your Silence. Therefore, I
sing.
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