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Nondual Highlights
Issue #2335 Wednesday, December 7,
2005, Editor: Mark
Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know
that everything in this life has a purpose. There is no need to
go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that
deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even
your bathtub.
- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, posted to DailyDharma
Gently, gently he whispered ...
"Be quiet
the secret cannot be spoken.
It is wrapped
in silence..."
- Rumi, posted to Poetic_Mysticism
Question: How can silence be so powerful?
Sri Ramana Maharshi: A realised one sends out waves of spiritual
influence, which draw many people towards him. Yet he may sit in
a cave and maintain complete silence. We may listen to lectures
upon truth and come away with hardly any grasp of the subject,
but to come into contact with a realised one, though he speaks
nothing, will give much more grasp of the subject. He never needs
to go out among the public. If necessary he can use others as
instruments.
The Guru is the bestower of silence who reveals the light of
Self-knowledge that shines as the residual reality. Spoken words
are of no use whatsoever if the eyes of the Guru meet the eyes of
the disciple.
Question: Why does not Bhagavan go about and preach the truth to
the people at large?
Sri Ramana Maharshi: How do you know I am not doing it? Does
preaching consist in mounting a platform and haranguing the
people around? Preaching is simple communication of knowledge; it
can really be done in silence only. What do you think of a man
who listens to a sermon for an hour and goes away without having
been impressed by it so as to change his life? Compare him with
another, who sits in a holy presence and goes away after some
time with his outlook on life totally changed. Which is the
better, to preach loudly without effect or to sit silently
sending out inner force?
Again, how does speech arise? First there is abstract knowledge.
Out of this arises the ego, which in turn gives rise to thought,
and thought to the spoken word. So the word is the great grandson
of the original source. If the word can produce an effect, judge
for yourself how much more powerful must be the preaching through
silence.
Question: Does Bhagavan give diksha (initiation)?
Sri Ramana Maharshi: Mouna (silence) is the best and the most
potent diksha. That was practised by Sri Dakshinamurti.
Initiation by touch, look, etc., are all of a lower order. Silent
initiation changes the hearts of all.
Dakshinamurti observed silence when the disciples approached him.
That is the highest form of initiation. It includes the other
forms. There must be subject-object relationship established in
the other diksha. First the subject must emanate and then the
object. Unless these two are there how is the one to look at the
other or touch him? Mouna diksha (silent initiation) is the most
perfect; it comprises looking, touching. It will purify the
individual in every way and establish him in the reality.
- Ramana Maharshi, from Silent Teachings
& Sat-sanga
The actual moment of realization happened while I was having
dinner with some Papaji devotees who had been with him for some
time. I was telling them how blissful my body felt and how my
mind just wouldn't work well enough to write Papaji a letter. In
a soft and gentle voice the man sitting across from me said,
" The bliss you are feeling doesn’t mean a thing. It
will eventually leave. Go to the source of your thoughts and you
will know who you are." I focused my attention inward to
find that place where my thoughts were coming from. Suddenly I
knew, without a doubt, that every thought I ever had was only my
imagination. It was so clear. In that moment the whole story of
"me and my life" disappeared into silence. All that
remained was Papaji’s laughter.
- Aruna Byers
A
gentle, loving, inner peace and silence is here and now in this
moment. It has always been this way. It is always here. It is
right here within you and all around you, a stillness, an
apparent void, a seeming nothingness out of which everything
arises, exists, and eventually returns.
You know this. You have felt this.
There is nothing more than this.
You are this.
- Mark McCloskey
