The state of silence
After breakfast, Yoga Swami asked us to keep the banana peels as they were to be given to the cow. He called the cow that was grazing in the garden. The cow entered the hut and he offered the peels with love. In the end, the cow licked his hand and wanted to sit on the ground. Yoga Swami gave her the last peel and then said friendly: “Now, leave us in peace, please. Do not bother us, Valli. You can see very well I have guests”. The cow bent her head as she understood and obeyed and did exactly as she was asked by the wise man.
After the cow left, Yoga Swami closed his eyes again and instantaneously went in his spiritual mysterious inner world. I was very curios to know in detail what Yoga Swami was doing when he closed his eyes. I wondered then if it was meditation or ecstasy (samadhi).
I thought it was a very good moment to openly talk about it but before I asked my question, he started to talk: “Look carefully at these trees. Even the trees meditate. Meditation means, first of all, silence that is completely lived with the ultimate essence of our being. If you realize you do not know anything indeed, you will live a profound state of meditation. Such an absolute sincerity is the favourable ground for the silence that reveals God. Silence profoundly felt is meditation”.
Yoga Swami bent towards us and said with passion: “You must always be simple. You must always be fully naked as a mirror in conscience. When you are completely reduced to nothing – when the ego is gone – when you become one with nothing (emptiness), then you are truly one with God. The man who is nothing knows God intimately and innerly, because God is permanently the Beatific Creating Emptiness. Nothing means everything. To be nothing means to be in total communion with everything. Because I realize I am nothing, because I am always a beggar – I have, thus, if I want, all the things. Nothing means everything. Do you understand? Can you really understand this?”
“Tell us about this state of Beatific Creating Emptiness” said my friend in a strung state of waiting.
“In reality, this means to desire absolutely nothing. It means to be able to say in all sincerity and be firmly convinced you know nothing. Once this state has been reached, it also means to be preoccupied by nothing about it so you cannot lose it”.
I was thinking about what he meant by saying to realize “you know nothing” – and I presumed it is the beatific state of “pure existence” in contrast with “becoming”.
“You think you know now, but you are still ignorant, actually. When you completely or enough realize you know nothing about yourselves, then you are one with God.”
Yoga Swami frequently made allusions to this state of essential silence. He spoke with us about it as if that had been his life. For the one who had not experienced this fundamental sate of samadhi (divine ecstasy), any description was always a theoretical generalization, no matter how clear that would have been.
This unlimited oceanic happiness, known in the yoga texts as beatitude, could be glimpsed in the presence of Yoga Swami. As for the question if Yoga Swami’s conscience enlarged indeed to include the consciences of the persons in his immediate surrounding or if the unlimited, hard to explain happiness or silent beatitude or divine ecstasy (samadhi) were all based on personal illusion, that was a problem that seemed very difficult to elucidate at that time.
A single aspect was obvious, almost everything Yoga Swami said then that was amazing and very simple at the same time that you could not stumble to forget the amazing practical implications of his affirmations for a moment. Thus, in those moments, I tried to mentally examine his words in order to be able to affirm the independence of the conscience and of the spirit, without asking further questions.
Is this essential state of illuminating silence divine grace’s action? Is it possible to make it appear in yourself? Do we sometimes feel it spontaneously for less than a second? Can any try to produce this essential silence make the ego inevitably active?
Yoga Swami came spontaneously in my help, as he knew all my inner doubts and difficulties due to his telepathical capacities. His remark was profound and unforgettable: “Inner silence appears when you completely realize there is nothing to win and to lose”.
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