Listening to the Silence

Dr Gautam Chatterjee

Sound is heard but can silence be eared? In Sadhana one has to move beyond the givens of resonance. And the givens are re-sounding sounds of all around reaching the proportion of chaotic noise when clustered together. These noises are sound of the nature, sound of living life forces and our enormous utterances apart from all kind of automotive man-made sound. These are the givens and Sadhak has to take his/her mind away from this “Noise Web” and disentangle them in various compartments to hear the music of silence.

Think you are amidst nature away from habitation. There you hear sound of nature, be it blowing of wind or gushing flow of a rivulet or the trembling leaves of tree and fluttering sound of birds and their humming of resonance. These sounds are soothing for us and we find the music in the air. But once being there for quite sometimes we also hear all those trees, mounds and mountains do talk through silence as well. Here, mind hears the sound of silence and if one concentrates further one can even see as if the sound has movement so is the silence that moves sways with certain amount of heaviness and our body feels the vibrations of those moving and at times over powering silence. Listening to this silence becomes easier when we do Sadhana inwardly or being in the state of antarmukhi yatra (a journey of internalization). In sadhana the journey from sound to silence is a holy retreat where the only sacred accomplice is nothing but talking silence that stokes our mind inward.