How are silence and solitude important in the spiritual growth of a person? Spirituality is the science of the Spirit, the Atman, the Prana or the Soul. It is about having a Self-Realization and thereafter, attaining God-Realization. In essence, Spirituality is all about knowing and realizing the truth about ourselves – ‘Who am I? Why am I born? How am I born? Why am I in the circumstances and situations of life that I am in? Am I born for a reason? If yes, what is the purpose of my life?’ – These are the questions that one addresses to spiritually grow and attain Self-Realization. Thus, Spirituality is all about the journey towards our inner self, a voyage to realize the truth about oneself. One can take this voyage to understand and realize oneself only with silence and solitude. Therefore, silence and solitude are very important for the spiritual growth and the spiritual journey of a person.
What is silence? Silence is something that cannot be explained. Simply put, silence is when there is no noise. This world is full of noise – The noise of people talking and chattering, the noise of motor vehicles and horns, the noise of animals and birds and many other noises. These are voices. Silence is when we are devoid of all the voice of the noise. What is solitude? Solitude is being with oneself and away from everybody and everything else. In solitude, we do not contribute to the worldly noise, rather, we become silent and experience silence.
What does silence do? In silence, we are able to contemplate ourself, our actions, circumstances and reactions to the situations. We human beings think that we are the body and the mind and that gives birth to the ego too. Hence, we start identifying ourselves with the body, mind and ego. Our mind is like a monkey. It is nothing but a bundle of thoughts. These thoughts are bombarded on us and these thoughts do not let us contemplate and discriminate between the truth and the myth. Our mind throws about 50 thoughts at us approximately, in a minute and that makes it a whopping 50,000 thoughts in a day. This is the Mental Thought Rate. When we are in silence and solitude, we are able to observe our mind and slowly and gradually, we become the witness from the victim. Our MTR or the Mental Thought Rate reduces gradually from an unmanageable, 50 thoughts per minute to 49, 48, 47 and so on, until it becomes one thought at a time. When we are able to slow down our MTR, these thoughts don’t lash us out, rather, they come in gently, one-by-one. This is stilling of the monkey mind and this state is a state of Mindfulness, Thoughtlessness or Consciousness. In this state of Consciousness, our intellect shines and we attain the power of discrimination. We can, then, discriminate our thoughts and act on every thought individually. Thus, reducing the Mental Thought Rate, we can still the mind and successfully, kill the mind. Silence and solitude helps us to go from a state of mind to a state of Mindfulness or Consciousness.
One must practice silence, solitude and meditation in their daily routine. Going from a state of mind with a high MTR of negative thoughts to a state of Consciousness with an MTR of one thought at a time and also switching all negative thoughts to positive ones, is not easy. Observing silence and in it, observing our thoughts and deliberately attempting to slow down this barrage of attacking negative thoughts and converting them into positive thoughts using the power of discrimination is one of the major progress in the spiritual growth of an individual. This is possible only when one is uninterrupted in this process of witnessing one’s own thoughts and that is possible only when one is in solitude without any external disturbance and interruption.
It is truly said that as long as there is the noise of the outside world, we cannot hear the divine voice of the inner world. When we are in silence and solitude, we stop speaking and stop our outer voice. Then, we can hear our inner voice, the Divine voice with clarity. Silence and solitude makes us listen, feel and experience the Divine voice that is within, by stilling all our sensory perceptions – sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. What is inside the depth of our heart,in our Consciousness? It is the truth that we are the Soul, the Spark Of Unique Life, which is amanifestation of God, of SIP, the Supreme Immortal Power. Unfortunately, we are unable to experience the Divine within because of so much yelling and yearning of the monkey mind on the outside. It is said the human being is a city of 9 doors. The 9 doors being 2 eyes, 2 nostrils, 2 ears, 1 mouth, 1 organ of excretion and 1 for procreation. As long as these 9 doors are opened, all the noises of the world bombard us but when we still our mind, shut these 9 doors and open the 10th door – we are able to experience a state of Enlightenment, the state of Spiritual Awakening. These 9 doors open outward and bring in noise and unrest to us but the 10th door opens inward. This door opens only in silence and solitude, when we are in Yoga with the Divine within.
Concluding the discussion, for spiritual growth, it is very important to practice meditation and contemplation. We must realize that we are not body, mind and ego. We are the Divine Soul, which is nothing but a manifestation of the Divine. Therefore, to start on the path of Spirituality and progress in spiritual growth, we must start with silence and solitude. Thus, silence and solitude are the ways, not just for meditation but also for contemplation on self and God, purification of the Soul, illumination about oneself that ultimately, leads to the Realization of the Truth!
