Prose   

 

 

OF COURSE, simple words -- with profound meaning. Emily Bronte rightly brings us to understanding of how one evolves and starts finding company in self. But this stage does not come by easily, as we all know. For, all of us grow under the shadow of the belief -- and also truth -- that man is a social animal. So, man needs company, we say -- and start seeking it. Every mother tells her little one, “Go, play with your friends.” And when a child has no friends, she is sad -- or made to feel sad by others. Company, thus, is all-important to us all, in all cultures, in all lands. This also makes us believe -- howsoever superficially, though -- that it is company, society, that is a source of happiness. Social animals, so to say! No matter all this belief, no matter all this traditional thinking, as one starts becoming more sensible -- that is when one starts respecting one’s own senses -- one realises that bliss is more easily available in one’s own company. In that state of mind, silence becomes an adorable state -- in which one converses with self, one starts loving one’s own sounds or one’s own silences.  

 

Seers and sages have often attached great importance to that state of being -- with self, contained and contented within, happy in inner exchange. Sages have found that such a state of being is where and when they are closer to God within. That was why philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson advised us: “Let’s be silent (so) that we may hear the whisper of God”. These are not mere words. These indicate the actual experience of all those who have the capacity to fall silent -- so that we can sense the slightest of whispers of God within. There are countless people who can hear the sound of silence -- which they equate with the whisper of the Divine. But attaining such a silence -- pregnant with God’s whisper -- is really, really not easy. For that to be attained, one has to get over all the mental clutter, all the emotional slush one collects over time, all the small desire that clouds plain thinking without any affectation.

 

Frankly, there is nothing occult about all this. This is simple psychology -- though complicated in implementation. Sages -- across cultures and time -- have found immense pleasure in silence -- maun -- in which they converse with self, and with God. Having denounced not just material issues but also the trappings of society, they renounce desire in a true sense. And that is when the realm of true silence begins.