The Inner Silence

An excerpt from page 115 of Holistic Consciousness by Phiroz Mehta

So let the senses function freely. Look, listen, touch, taste and smell, observing with as full attention as possible. At first, reactions for or against what you observe will arise within; and the brain will talk back all the time, saying: ‘That is right … I don’t agree … That is new to me … How absurd …! What a bore …!’ etc., etc. — ad infinitum. Keep observing as patiently and dispassionately as possible, not like a tourist who wants to see a whole continent in a week! Reject nothing, accept nothing, condemn nothing, approve nothing. In this way you will see the fact as the fact and understand how it comes into being, how it changes and what are its consequences. Similarly, the total factual observation of your brain talking back at your sense impressions will reveal to you exactly what you are. You will then understand yourself thoroughly and also understand what any person who is talking or working with you is like inwardly.

In due time you will find that the brain’s reactive chatter will calm down. Finally, it will stop and the calm and clarity of the inner silence will enlighten you. In the ancient school of Pythagoras, freshmen spent their first two years as akoustikoi, listeners, just as sravana, listening, was the first stage of learning for the pupils of the Upanishadic teachers. It is a most arduous discipline, but if you care for Truth above all else such pure, bare observation will tell you the truth of all things as they are. This means that you become clearly conscious of that which you observe. You are then on the way to knowing by being what you observe. In the process all the beliefs, convictions, anxieties and fears characterizing your worldly state of consciousness will disappear. You will know the Truth — and ‘the Truth will make you free’ (John 8. 32). The psyche, emptied of all clutter, will be filled with the knowledge which is Truth, and you who are belief-empty will be faith-full. Unknown to you, Pure Mind, functioning freely through your empty psyche (the clean temple) will release a constantly self-replenishing spiritual energy which will enable you to be a still, silent observer, just as Transcendence attentively observes the entire cosmos.

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