Embracing the Quietude and the Silence of the Mind

In Western society, people are inculcated, from early childhood,in the idea that they need to be active in order to succeed in the world. The outlook is extremely focused on an outward perspective. The body, life-force and mind have to be trained and harnessed into action. Time not spent in active efforts at development and putting the powers of being to work is considered to be time ‘wasted’. People who do not focus on putting the powers of mind, life and body to work in the world in a noticeable way are considered to be ‘dreamers’ and are not taken seriously. Conversely, vacation times, and the period known as retirement after the active working life has been completed, are treated as times for the individual to simply cease from efforts. Countless numbers of people head to the beach and simply sleep and absorb the sun during their vacations. The absence of the rajasic mental and vital activity frequently falls into a tamasic torpor and lassitude. While this is the basic standard of Western society, there is no doubt that the underlying attitudes involved have crept into the Eastern view of modern-day life as well. This is now something of a world-wide phenomenon.

These attitudes colour the view people have about the process of meditation in general and the need to quiet or silence the mind. Before meditation or the silence of the mind can actually take place, the individual has to overcome the basic mind-set that equates quiet with the wasting of time.

When the practitioner begins to experience the quietude of the mind, one of the first issues he faces is the fear that the emptiness he is experiencing in the mind is somehow a negative event. He may feel he is on the point of dying and losing his identity. He may feel like he is becoming incompetent without the thought-processing that formerly occupied his mind. He may feel like he is losing something essential to his being. Whatever feeling arises, he needs to find a way to overcome it, let the silence seep into the mind stuff and turn with aspiration to become receptive to the higher spiritual force that informs and manages without the constant flow of words or images that constitutes the normal mental space.

Those individuals who have depended on the mentality for their action in the world, who have a career and an active exte
al life, sometimes fear that they will not be able to function. For these individuals, it may be best for them to create a time and space for letting the being separate itself from the activity and retrain the mind to honor and appreciate the quietude, until such time as a new mode of action develops that can continue to work within the silence and quietude.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “Keep the quietude and do not mind if it is for a time an empty quietude; the consciousness is often like a vessel which has to be emptied of its mixed or undesirable contents; it has to be kept vacant for a while till it can be filled with things new and true, right and pure. The one thing to be avoided is the refilling of the cup with the old turbid contents. Meanwhile wait, open yourself upwards, call very quietly and steadily, not with a too restless eage
ess, for the peace to come into the silence and, once the peace is there, for the joy and the presence.”

Sri Aurobindo, Bases of Yoga, Chapter 1, Calm — Peace — Equality, pg. 8