Lesson 157 - Q&A – What is inner silence?

From: Yogani
Date: Wed Apr 7, 2004 6:44pm

New Members: It is recommended you read from the beginning of the web
archive, as previous lessons are prerequisite to this one. The first
lesson is, "Why This Discussion?"

Q: Inner silence has been mentioned many times in these lessons, and
the words seem simple, but I'd like to clarify what we're talking
about. I believe it was Krishnamurti who talked about jumping into
the space between mental words. Is that what inner silence means in
the context of these lessons--that space with no auditory content
that I can extend for a while before the mind manages to start
burbling again?

I have also noticed that I frequently start to have vivid mental
images during samyama practice. No auditory to disrupt the silence,
but clear, dream-quality images. I suspect it means that I'm falling
asleep during sadhana, but therein lies another question. Is
meditation and samyama performed teetering on the edge between deep
relaxation and sleep? Or has mind turned off from the path of sleep
and headed in a different direction?

A: Inner silence is at the heart of yoga. Without it, there can be no
yoga. In the second lesson we discussed how yoga is the joining of
the subject (observer) and the object (observed). The object is not
so hard to find. It is everything we perceive in our heart and mind,
and out through our senses. The object is everywhere. And so too is
the subject. But the subject is not always so obvious. The subject is
the inner silence we have been talking about here so often.

What is inner silence? It has many names in the traditions: sat-chit-
ananda, the Self, the witness, unconditioned awareness, the void,
emptiness, Father God, Shiva, samadhi, Tao, and so on... In the
lessons we often call it pure bliss consciousness. So many names for
what amounts to nothingness. But the nothingness is alive. It is
aware. It is everywhere. And it is somehow blissful within itself. It
is the "I" in you and me that remains constant. It is the universal "I" that expresses as all that we see, yet remains mostly hidden within, except to those who have cultivated Self-awareness through yoga. Success in that cultivation brings a state of freedom from the ups and downs of this world, even as we continue to be involved in our everyday activities.

Yoga is about revealing our "I," experiencing it in its native
unconditioned state. Yoga is for answering the question "Who am I?"
and consciously becoming it. Our nervous system has the ability to
give us that experience, and more. This is why the human nervous
system is called the "temple of God."

With direct experience through practices we can go from the
philosophy/theory of inner silence to the reality of it. The leap
from theory to reality is found in the ways that our nervous system
manifests different forms of awareness. The nervous system operates
in modes that we can identify as different states of consciousness.
There are three states of consciousness we all know well:

1. Waking state -- what we experience in our daily activity.

2. Dreaming state -- what we sometimes experience in sleep.

3. Deep dreamless sleep state -- what we don't experience much, but
we were somewhere.

Inner silence is a state distinctly different from these three. We
know it in our deep meditation as blissful awareness without any
objects. Or it can be mixed with objects too, like thoughts,
feelings, or whatever. But in its pristine state, it is without
objects. So in yoga it gets it own number as a unique state of
consciousness:

4. Inner silence -- it is all those descriptive words and definitions
mentioned already. In yoga it is sometimes called simply "Turiya,"
which means "the fourth state" in sanskrit.

The difference between inner silence and the other three states of
consciousness is that inner silence is unchanging and can be
cultivated in the nervous system as an unending presence superimposed
under, in, and through the other three states of consciousness. Those
who have meditated for some time find this to be the case. It starts
as some inner peace and an awareness of a silent quality coexisting
with and within the objects of our perception. This happens with
external observations through the senses, and with our thoughts and
feelings too. We see them as the objects that they are, occurring
external to our unconditioned inner silent awareness. With daily yoga
practices, inner silence grows and becomes the the movie screen upon
which all our experiences are projected. We become the movie screen --
the infinite movie screen of life.

Is inner silence is "the space between mental words" (thoughts). Yes,
it is. It is the gap we sometimes experience as we pass from one
thought to another, and from one state of consciousness to another.
When the music stops for an instant, we are left with inner silence,
our Self. For the yogi and yogini, inner silence is also experienced
behind and within the thoughts, and within all of life. So, when we
let go into inner silence during samyama, there may be no mental
activity, or there may be some. If we are letting go, our attention
will be in inner silence, assuming we have cultivated some in deep
meditation beforehand. Samyama and enlightenment (first stage and
beyond) depend on innate inner silence that will be there whether the
mind is "burbling" or not. It also comes up in dreaming state and
deep sleep -- that's 24/7 inner silence. Once we have that rising, we
are becoming ready for serious yoga, union of the subject and the
object, and that is the union of the divine poles within us leading
to the unity condition where all is experienced as a divine flow of
the One.

So, the reason why be begin with meditation in these lessons is to
cultivate inner silence first, the prerequisite for all the rest that
happens in yoga. Once we have that coming up, it is possible to open
many doors. When Shiva (inner silence) is there, then arousing and
fostering ecstatic union with Kundalini/Shakti becomes possible, and
a joyous experience rather than a traumatic one. It is the natural
next step. So after meditation is established, that is what we do
here in the lessons -- awaken Kundalini and get down to the business
of joining the subject and the object. That's yoga.

As for falling asleep in samyama, meditation, etc., from the above
you can see it is not quite the same as crossing from one state
(inner silence) to another state (like sleep). It is not either-or in
practices. We can be in both at the same time, which is often the
case during meditation especially. That is why we count time we
are "lost" in thoughts or no thoughts in meditation as practice time.
The purification in the nervous system is going on in these
conditions. If we drift off in samyama, we just easily pick up with
the sutras where we left off. In that case, we have gone from the
sutra off into some blend of inner silence and the subtle flavor of
the sutra. When we realize that has happened, we just easily continue
from where we left off. The time for getting through samyama can be
stretched out a bit if we lose track like that. If something like
sleep keeps overcoming us in a particular samyama session, we can
just call it done and lie down and rest. This is good samyama also.
It can happen if a lot of obstructions are being released. Inner
silence is being cultivated throughout the whole procedure, so,
again, it is not one state of consciousness or the other. It is
rising inner silence with whatever else is going on.

Keep in mind that all of this we are talking about is not on the
level of the curious mind, the intellect. Only the theory has to
do with intellect. The practices are not for promoting theory.
Daily advanced yoga practices are for purifying and opening our
nervous system in ways that are neurological and biological – a
dramatic expansion of the functioning of our nervous system. The
experiences of ecstatic bliss that come up are very real –
ultimately as real as the most intimate lovemaking we can imagine,
and it is all going on inside. So, cultivating inner silence has
far-reaching implications in our lives.

The guru is in you.

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