This is an extract taken from The Rosicrucian #87 (Feb 2022).

As a word, ‘silence’, has probably more subtleties and meanings than most of us are aware of. Of course we all know a few of the nuances of meaning of this and other related words, but usually we think of just one of them:‘no sound.’ Silence comes from the Latin root silere, meaning to be silent, quiet, noiseless, not speaking, being verbally inactive, vocally at rest, ceasing to speak, sing, etc. And from silere we get, via Old French, our familiar English word silence, though sadly devoid of much of the subtlety of meaning it originally possessed.

The concept of silence, and of course the word silere, far predates the language of the Romans, and can be traced to a word in ancient Phoenician, where it meant not only quietness but also things like stillness, tranquillity, serenity, peace, being content, reconciled and more, indeed much more than merely refraining from making sounds. From that ancient Northwest Semitic word it is believed a similar sounding word found its way into Aramaic, Hebrew and eventually Arabic, is today known as Shalomin Hebrew and Salaam in Arabic, meaning ‘peace’ or, more specifically, the blessing: ‘peace be upon you.’

Over the millennia, the original word has altered in pronunciation from language to language, and small nuances of meaning have been added and taken away from it. And by the time the word entered the English language, its meaning had already long ago changed from its original intended form to what we commonly attribute to it today, namely, the absence of sound. In the following article, I will discuss three types of silence and end off with a fourth type, seldom used but, more than the other three, can be perceived as silence in its ancient, original meaning of quietness, stillness, tranquillity, serenity, peace and even the very threshold of the Abyss of Eternity.

Silence of the Tongue

I’ll begin with verbal silence. Quite apart from trying to avoid loud, aggressive people and environments, some people wisely try to control their own input into those environments; and that includes restricting the amount of talking they do. That’s not to say we need to be meek and mild in all circumstances, but it does mean it is good to remember that being verbally silent is often a wiser course of action than speaking. Of course we needn’t avoid speaking altogether, merely exercise careful control over our words and speak only when the circumstances require it. Being able to speak well when necessary and to be silent when it is better to say nothing is the ideal way of conserving and even building up our precious reserves of Vital Life Force. But it is of course not the easiest of things to do, especially when issues we feel passionately about are at stake.

Knowing when not to speak is important and, if you think back a bit over your life, I’m sure you’ll agree that speaking in anger and saying things you didn’t really mean was one of the first issues you recognised as a stumbling block to your inner development. We all need to be inwardly restrained from speaking at times when nothing good can come from what we’re so eager to say. It’s a delicate and refined form of verbal control: knowing when to speak, how to say it best and for greatest benefit, and of course knowing when to be silent.

For some, especially the gregarious, friendly types, it is often hard to remain silent when silence would accomplish more than talking. No matter how good our verbal intentions are, there are still times when silence would accomplish more than talking. On the flip-side of the coin, though, how do we learn to say what needs to be said when just a few supportive words could be of immense, even life-altering benefit for someone? That is the delicate balance needed: knowing when to speak and how to say it for the greater good, and knowing when to remain silent.

Deliberate, well-thought-out control of our words and how we say them, combined with attunement with the wisdom and experience of our deeper self, are of course the only way forward. It is a true art that comes ultimately only from deep attunement with our soul. Proficiency does not come easily, and it demands we deliberately be aware at all times what we’re doing and what we really wish the outcome to be, so we can exercise the required control the instant it is needed. Usually, there is no advance warning and our control has to be like a subconscious reflex action, fully automatic and under the direction of our deeper, more mature, more accomplished self.

A good place to begin is to resolve deliberately, though only after careful consideration, to do our best to be as alert as possible always. It is a deliberate, sensitive and refined form of manipulation of awareness, far superior to any of the extremely harmful drugs some people take nowadays to get a boost to their cognitive alertness. It goes much further than this, and ultimately remains under our full control. Being conscious of what we’re doing or saying at the present moment, what led us to the present moment, and crucially, knowing what we’re about to say, is paramount.

When fighter pilots train to become aerial masters of combat, an expression of overriding importance drummed into them is ‘situational awareness.’ As mystics, we are training to enhance our situational awareness in the arena of our inner lives, and it behoves us therefore to train ourselves assiduously to be constantly alert to our own motivations, our own thoughts. And that of course spills over into control of our words, knowing when to be silent, when to speak, and what to say when we need to speak.

Saying Nothing vs Speaking Up

We can probably all recall instances when we babbled on when it would have been better to say nothing; and other times when it would have been far better to speak up but we remained silent. Most of us respect a person who always seems to say the right thing at just the right time and, furthermore, says it with precision and few words. The ability to speak one’s mind intelligently when there is a need to, and remain silent when talking would be counter productive, is a trait most worthy of development.

As with all valuable things in life, it is however a very difficult thing to accomplish, but one that most assuredly eventually has to be mastered. Most of the time, what we say or fail to say is affected more by how our egos have reacted to a situation than by pure reason or intuition. And frequently we leave things unsaid simply because we’re too afraid to hurt or offend someone, even though we know it would be better for certain things to be said and for the person to be temporarily shocked at our frankness than to remain silent and for no possible good to come from our interaction with the person. The truth hurts at times, but in some cases that is not a good-enough reason to remain silent, especially when a few well-placed comments could have an enormous positive bearing on the lives of many.

A fundamental rule relating to the question of whether or not to speak is to be intelligently informed about what we’re about to say. Making our statements on matters with precision and clarity, and avoiding mere waffle and idle chit-chat, is fundamental to our decision whether to remain silent or to speak. Remember how harmful loose and uninformed talk can be because of the unquestioning nature in which so many individuals accept information. If inaccurate statements are made or, worse still, if deliberate lies are said, who among the many listeners would bother to investigate further? The sad fact is that very few would, and that is why we all, though especially the media, have such great responsibility to report accurately and without embellishment what we believe to be the truth. Sadly, the internet is awash with both deliberate and innocent though sloppy falsehoods, and many lives each year are harmed by this.

Summing up, it all comes down to a point of judgement in the use of our speech, thinking before expressing our opinions in words, and of always being situationally aware of what we’ve just said and what we feel right about saying next. Above all though, the one thing which will always cause us to say the right thing at the right time is to say what we have to say with kindness, always! It is an aspect of universal love, and is sure to bring out in us the most beautiful verbal expressions we are capable of.

Silence of the mind involves exercising a basic control over the idle wanderings of our thoughts.

Silence of the Mind

The second form of silence is more personal, for it involves silence, or rather stillness, of the mind, denoting a refined control of our mental faculties. Controlling our thoughts is not the same as suppressing them, but it does mean channelling them into the most important things we need to think about. Silence of the mind involves exercising a basic control over the idle wanderings of our thoughts. We’ve often heard the expression ‘thoughts are things.’ It means that thoughts have certain potentialities and that ‘wrong thinking’ and ‘right thinking’ have definite effects upon our lives and immediate environment which in turn lead to physical consequences. That is not only a Rosicrucian principle; it is accepted by all serious systems of thought.

If thoughts really are ‘things’, then they are important primarily because they have value, just as rare metals and stones have value. Would it not be wise therefore to use our thoughts carefully and not waste them? After all, the number of thoughts we will have during our lifetime is limited, and idle thinking or daydreaming without purpose is an offence to the self and a failure to exercise silence of the mind. Daydreaming is fine, provided there is a clear purpose to it. But if we allow ourselves to do nothing but idly daydream without purpose and purely as a result of a lack of discipline, we are wasting the life force that animates us. And we are wasting our limited, precious time and efforts with thoughts that should, at the very least, be constructive, creative and possible of being brought to successful fruition of something good and beneficial for as many people as possible.

It may be enjoyable to idly daydream of how great it would be to be wealthy, or to accomplish great, important things in life; or worse still, how we could have altered history if we had lived in a different era with the knowledge we have today. However, merely daydreaming and doing nothing of a practical nature to implement our thoughts is not exercising good judgement. What is needed is a deliberate directing of our thoughts, throwing out idle speculation and daydreams about what could never happen in the real world, and replacing them with thoughts specifically intended to bring about a better state of being.

Clearly it would be far better for us in quiet moments to try and direct our thoughts towards such qualities and ideas as will bring us happiness and contentment, than to idly speculate upon how great life would be if we were suddenly to inherit a fortune. Having a lot of money suddenly thrust upon us would be no guarantee of gaining happiness or inner peace. But preparing ourselves for an elevated mode of existence through the disciplined and channelled form of thinking practised by mystics…, this brings us not only happiness but a supreme sense of fulfilment as well.

Let us therefore control our speech and accomplish it by first and foremost controlling our thoughts. Silence in both cases is often the preferred route, though such silence has meaning only if there is purpose and intent behind it.

Silence of the Will

And then there is silence or stillness of the will. Society generally considers self-control and the development of will-power to be important personality traits, and certainly there is great merit in this. For only when intelligent people constructively exercise their will-power can society have well-planned and clearly defined directions to follow. One of the better by-products of silence of the will is the ability to direct oneself towards the development of a worthwhile moral character…, moral, that is, in the context of our societal and spiritual norms.

Silence of the will is the basis of all control of behaviour and comes before both control of our thoughts and control of our speech. So, while there may be short-term benefits to the wholesale gratification of our desires, the long-term consequences for society as a whole, and indeed ourselves in particular, are harmful. Without a healthy restraint of some of our deeper urges, we run the risk of impinging upon the freedoms of others and indeed of entirely halting our own evolution. Being ruled by an incessant need to gratify every urge we have, no matter how trivial, is an indication of how far we have to go in attaining mastery over our lives.

Physical desires or urges have their proper place in nature and the perpetuation of every species. But for creatures like humans, who generally have well- developed abilities to think, reason and plan for the future, the unthinking physical urges of the body should never become the dominant purpose of life itself. Silence of the will therefore implies control of the cravings of the physical senses and relegating them to their proper place in the overall scheme of our deeper evolution. Silence of the will is more than merely controlling our thoughts; it means, most importantly, controlling our emotions and the so-called ‘natural inclinations.’ These all precede the intellect, which in turn precedes speech and action.

Food and drink are essential to the maintenance of life. But while most of us enjoy good food and drink when taken in moderation and at their proper time, devoting our attention and effort solely to the gratification of this one physical appetite has serious long-term consequences, not only because of the obesity it eventually causes but because of the damage it does to our ability to control our destiny. All urges are directly linked to chemical and hormonal secretions within the body. And while we accept that some of these imbalances are beyond our power to correct, we should do everything possible to employ silence of the will to affect our imbalances and to bring them under control. So, by silencing or at least muting the will in such cases, we are placing our physical desires in their proper perspective. Almost always, those inclinations are mere wants rather than true needs, and muting or silencing the will in such cases enables us to fully comprehend and accept that the excessive gratification of our wants and desires is not worthy of our mystical aspirations.

An important aspect of silence of the will is the development of emotional control. Absolute free reign of the emotions, namely, allowing ourselves to act and react purely as we feel and as our emotions happen to be at the moment, is harmful to our further ability to develop. Every time we allow ourselves to act in this way we make it just that bit harder to control our lives, and considerable effort becomes necessary to undo the inner damage which our unbridled emotional behaviour has caused.

Silence of the Self

To sum up, I have mentioned three forms of silence: Silence of the Tongue which depends on Silence of the Mind which depends on Silence of the Will. All three are important, and many techniques for accomplishing them have been devised over the millennia, many times over, but especially by Rosicrucians. But above and far beyond all these stands Silence of the Self, the sort of silence we all strive for when we seek true meditation and attunement with the God of our understanding. Silence of the Self leads to an opening up of the main channel of communication between our outer, mundane self and the infinite sanctity of the Source of all that is. It is by far the hardest to accomplish, yet we can get there eventually if we accept that small steps must at times be taken in order to reach our final destination.

Begin, therefore, by regularly and deliberately silencing the tongue when there is no need to speak, silencing the mind when there is a need to control your thoughts, and silencing the will when there is a need to control your instinctual emotions and urges. Stepping up from the mundane level of these three areas of control to the level implicit in the final step of Silence of the Self is impossible to accomplish in a short time and probably impossible to accomplish even in a single lifetime. But the simple act of just thinking about silence as not merely being the property of ‘no sound’ but, more importantly, conveying for us the qualities of quietness, stillness, tranquillity, serenity and peace, is a good first step to take. And thinking of silence in these terms is a sure way of leading us to the path upon which we will eventually arrive at Silence of the Self.