The Perfume of Silence

by Francis Lucille

  That is where the second prerequisite applies. For meditation to become actualized, our attention has to be free from any object. However, there is no possibility of liberating our attention from objects if the intention is not pure. If the intention is not pure there will always be a fixation onto something, a fear or a desire, a personal involvement. However, if the intention is pure, all that is required for the attention to liberate itself from objects is to simply notice its fixation on any object.

  This fixation of the attention can take place within any one of the three realms of experience: the external world, the thoughts, and the bodily sensations or feelings. For instance, if you discover that a thought is running in circles, that would be a fixation in the mind. If you notice that your attention is drawn outside towards sounds, that would be a fixation on an external object. These two kinds of fixations are usually easy to notice and after a while we no longer indulge them. However, the third kind, the fixation on a bodily sensation, is a habit that has stronger and deeper roots for most of us. It is harder to detect because it is sometimes mistaken for stillness or peace.

  We often seem to reach a place of stillness in meditation. However, although it is a quiet place, it has no juice, no perfume. If we look closer we see that the mind is in fact resting on a bodily sensation, a localization in the body.

  Don’t let your mind rest upon any object. In this sense, meditation requires a kind of vigilance. The only place to rest is the Self. When we create a sensation in the body to rest on, we create a pseudo Self, a pseudo “me.” As soon as we detect such a pattern, we are free. When you become aware of such a localization or attachment, try to make a deliberate effort to move the attention away from it. We do this simply by allowing the sensation upon which we were resting to expand into the surrounding space or by just going back to unlocalized presence. Although our mind doesn’t know where unlocalized presence is, our presence knows very well where to find itself. It is always right here.

  Meditation has nothing to do with eliminating the bodily sensation upon which we are resting. It is simply to notice that we are resting on it. When we try to release our attention from the object, the sensation, we notice a web of resistance that keeps us attached to it. This resistance becomes manifest the moment we try to place our attention on the source. It may seem like an effort to take the attention away from its habitual resting-place in this way, to take it away from the garage. However, the opposite is in fact the case. It is the cessation of focusing our attention on this sensation, this pseudo self in the body, which reveals the previously undetected efforts required to maintain it.

  Meditation means to be open to the new at every moment. This is possible provided we don’t fall asleep with the old, with the past, with an object. If the meditation is boring or repetitive, it means that we are in the garage. It is very simple to see. It is just a habit of remaining fixed on an object. Don’t superimpose a limitation on your unlimited nature. Be the vastness knowingly.

  In this meditation, we realign the way we feel with our understanding of the truth. If we understand that we are all pervading and limitless presence, why feel solid and limited? Don’t stick to that which is solid and limited. Take off!

  During the presence of any object, our presence is there. The object only indicates our presence. The object is not an obstacle. It is not necessary to fight the object, to try to get rid of it. Simply transcend the object by taking off from it into the presence in which it appears.

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  When we die, does any trace of the individual remain?

  Reality appears in accordance with our beliefs. If we feel that we are the body, then when the body dies, we die. If we think we are the mind and that the body and the world are subsets of the mind, then reality will appear according to this belief. In neither of these cases does the death of the body imply the end of the sense of separation. When all these beliefs and images disappear through understanding, they disappear in consciousness, in us. However, we cannot convey through words the actual experience that we, as consciousness, do not die. All that can be conveyed through words is the understanding that there is no logical or experiential reason to believe that the consciousness which is seeing or understanding these words right this moment is personal. The moment we are open to the possibility that it is impersonal we are, by definition, open to the possibility that it does not die, because it is our experience that whatever dies is personal or limited. However, at this point it is only a logical inference. It is not an experience.

  The actual experience that consciousness is not personal and that it does not die, however it comes to us, could be called enlightenment. It can be realized in many ways. It may be realized inside as knowingness, as direct evidence, or it may be realized through the world, when the world starts to appear in a miraculous way. The moment we are open to the possibility that the world is an appearance in consciousness, then the world loses its solidity. It even loses it dreamlike, magical quality. It goes beyond that. It becomes a revelation. It is both ordinary and extraordinary. If we look at it from the point of view of the person, of the individual, we see it as ordinary. If we look at it from the point of view of the impersonal “I,” then we see the miracle. It doesn’t matter how this experience comes about. What counts is the result.

  Imagine you go on a safari with a guide. In this metaphor, the guide is the teacher. The guide knows where the tiger usually goes to drink in the evening, so he takes you there. The guide doesn’t make the tiger appear. However, if you stay at that place, you are likely to see it.

  Here we are taken to that place through the understanding that there is no evidence that consciousness is personal. At this point, we are open to the possibility that our consciousness, not some conceptual consciousness out in space somewhere totally apart from ourselves, but this very consciousness seeing these words right this moment, is God’s consciousness. That is the one in you who hears, understands, feels, listens, sees. That is divine consciousness. It is not personal.

  Once we are open to that possibility and stay in that openness, we are at the place where the tiger comes to drink. The tiger appears at its own pleasure. When we become very silent at that place, with no expectation of the tiger, that is when he chooses to appear. We have to be free from expectation. As long as there is expectation, we project our own tiger; we create our own image of the tiger.

  The mind creates an image of God, of consciousness, and that is simply an agitation, a fabrication, a product of the mind and, ultimately, an avoidance of the real tiger. To understand that consciousness is divine implies that it lies beyond the personal mind. It implies that the mind cannot comprehend or apprehend it. The mind has to abdicate, to renounce any effort to know. Then something will happen, something out of the blue. Perhaps just a sound, something that comes fresh and reveals its origin. It is as though the silence becomes alive. It is like nothing becoming something and everything else becoming nothing.

  When we stand at the edge of the river waiting for the tiger, it seems that the silence takes on a quality of its own. The mind comes to a stop. In the Indian tradition that is the moment when the teacher says, “You are that. You are that silence. You are that.”

  Don’t expect anything, and you’ll get everything.

  There Is No Time, at All Times

  During meditation I am aware of something localized in a particular place in the body. It is an experience of silence. It is where I would say, “I am.”

  An object is not silence, it appears in silence. An object by itself does not have the perfume of silence. It points towards silence when we are open to the now. Later on we discover that the object itself is permeated by silence. An object localized in the body is in a state of transition, but silence itself is not localized in the body. Silence is that which remains after an experience has vanished, whether that experience is a thought, a feeling, a sensation, or a perception. It is silence, not the object that is experienced, which matters. It is always in th
e present, never in the past. In classical Greek the word angel meant “messenger.” These “messages” are with us all the time. Whatever comes to us unexpected and unsolicited, for instance the singing of the birds or the coolness of the air, is in fact just such a message.

  Listening implies welcoming our experience as it is, without subsequent thought, comment, judgment, interpretation, or analysis. It implies simply being open to these messages and allowing them to flow through us. The purpose of the message is to take us back to the one who has sent it. It is an invitation to the castle.

  What is the difference between feelings and bodily sensations?

  The word “feelings” has several meanings. For instance, confusion and depression are referred to as feelings, but both have a component in the mind. Both are felt as sensations in the body, but both are also based on the belief that we are separate persons. In the case of confusion, the belief that we are separate entities triggers agitation of the mind whose purpose, in this case, is to protect the personal entity we believe ourselves to be, and to make it happy by ensuring that its desires are fulfilled. However, every time a desire is met, two or three new ones arise, so true fulfillment is not reached. Innumerable desires arise in this way, each looking for fulfillment in a different direction, until the situation is out of control. Confusion ensues when the thinking process spirals out of control, due to the multiplicity of the desires and fears of the ego and this in turn perpetuates the notion that we are separate entities.

  It is also possible that we become caught in repetitive patterns of feelings in the body, which are more deeply rooted than our thoughts. In this case the mind may not be agitated, in fact, there might not be any thinking, but nevertheless, feeling continues.

  For instance, we may feel that we are facing a dark, blank wall, and it requires a lot of courage to ask ourselves what this wall consists of. If we do this by completely welcoming the feeling, without any intention to reject it, we discover that it consists of layers of suppressed bodily sensations. These feelings are suppressed because, having labeled them “unpleasant,” we are afraid or unwilling to experience them completely and they are therefore buried, so to speak, in the body.

  If we completely welcome the feeling we may find that other feelings begin to surface, such as dullness, boredom, or lack, as if something were missing. If in turn we become interested in this lack and welcome it, other feelings such as fear or panic may start to rise. In this way layers of feelings are revealed, each with a location or locations in the body and as each in turn is welcomed, a new and deeper layer is revealed.

  It may also happen during this process, that we have insights regarding the origin of a specific feeling, but it is not always the case. For instance, we may feel uncomfortable, and suddenly it becomes clear that it was as a result of finding a parking ticket on our windscreen that morning. The subsequent negative thoughts that were not processed on the spot create the ego at the level of the mind and leave a residue of subliminal feelings in our body, which in turn reinforce the sense of being a separate person.

  One of the obstacles to processing our feelings is that they find hiding places in the body, thereby providing an opportunity for the ego, the sense of separation, to maintain itself. The body is a good hiding place for the ego because we are not fully aware of it. We live primarily in activities and thinking, and relatively little in feeling or perceiving. This lack of awareness at the bodily level means that we have little sensory knowledge of, for instance, our diaphragm or our face, and because we are unaware of them, they are ideal places for feelings such as fear to hide. It is for this reason that we include the body in our meditation.

  It sounds as if these feelings have a realm of their own.

  At the level of sensing we don’t have a body as we usually conceive of it, we simply have the body as we actually sense it. However, it is left unexplored and largely unknown, because so many feelings are suppressed or unexpressed. A distinction is made between the body as we sense it and the body as we think of it, the body we perceive in the mirror. It is important to deal with the body as we actually sense it. We don’t have to think about it and we don’t have to worry about whether it is real or not. We are simply dealing with the actual sensations and feelings as they arise. Sometimes, we use words such as space, and describe these feelings as icebergs floating in the ocean and so on; these are just metaphors to help us do this exploration. They have no meaning per se. These localizations in the body, where subliminal feelings lurk, are like dense clusters of energy. They are contracted areas that occupy our attention at the expense of other areas that are neglected. In this way a polarity is created between tension and dynamism on the one hand, and areas in the body of which we are not aware, on the other. If we give these neglected areas the attention they deserve, the two poles of the battery are put in contact, so to speak, and the tension is discharged. The system goes back to a state of balance and of stability.

  The key is to listen to the bodily sensations. In the beginning we have to become aware that we are predominantly occupied with thinking and not enough with feeling the body. So we have to allow some time during the day for listening to bodily sensations without expecting anything, just seeing the body and allowing it to reveal itself as it is. Gradually, the body expands and at some point, either during the meditation or some time later, we realize that whereas we would previously have thought that we were in a room, for instance, we now feel that the room is actually in us. In fact, the body doesn’t expand. Rather it has always been this expansion. It is just that the limitations that led us to believe the body was restricted vanish or are neutralized.

  What is the essential difference between positive and negative emotions?

  A negative feeling is a bodily sensation with an I-thought attached to it. It always has these two components. When we clearly understand that the “I” around which the feeling revolves is a fictitious entity then, as a result of this understanding, the I-thought is dropped. The feeling has now been downgraded to the rank of a bodily sensation. We now welcome this sensation; that is, we simply allow it to unfold in our benevolent and indifferent presence. All sensations, like all thoughts, are dynamic. They are in motion. They move and change, some slowly, some fast. However, because they are dynamic they have a shelf life. They are no longer supported by the I-thought, by the thought, “He did this to me, so I am justified, et cetera.” Being unsupported, they will evolve and change and eventually dissolve, although that is of no concern to us.

  We have to be sure that there is no ulterior motive in our welcoming. If we secretly harbor the desire to get rid of an unpleasant sensation, then this desire itself will become another layer of resistance, of refusal, of contraction in the body.

  Positive feelings are feelings that come directly from the source, unmediated through the thought or feeling of being a separate entity.

  Sometimes I get a feeling of joy in my heart. It feels as though the heart doesn’t have the capacity to hold it. Is there a connection between the joy and the silence?

  Joy comes from silence. Silence expresses itself in many ways and joy is one of them. We cannot experience the silence as an object, but when we direct our heart towards silence, one of its responses is joy. It fills us up with joy. Our body is taken by joy. Sometimes, it is like an earthquake and we feel that the body is not able to take it. We may feel that the body is not able to resonate with this dimension and somehow that is true, but when we have these moments of grace, our body gives up some of its tension. The next time that we are taken by joy, it resonates a little better and opens up more until, after repeated exposure, it becomes a perfect instrument. If we touch a violin with our hand it cannot vibrate properly; we have to let go. In the same way our body has to be completely expanded to become a perfect instrument for joy.

  Does consciousness or silence only express itself in beauty rather than in feelings like fear or anger? Aren’t these things also an expression of silence and consciousness?


  Yes, both the carrot and the stick take the donkey home. For example, imagine a fly landing on a painting by Rembrandt. It lands on a clear area of the painting and finds it beautiful. Then it walks a little and reaches a dark area and thinks it cold, dark, and fearful. So it takes off and only then does it see the whole painting. As long as it is looking at only the clear or the dark areas of the painting, the painting is not beautiful. These are opposing areas that, when put into perspective from a distance, contribute to the beauty and meaning of the whole painting. It is true that everything, including fear and anger, is an expression of consciousness. However, in the case of negative feelings such as these, they are always founded on the thought or feeling of being limited and separate. We have to be careful of saying, “Well, everything is consciousness so anything goes and nothing matters.” This is not implied in the statement, “Everything, including fear and anger, is an expression of consciousness.”

  We have to be very honest with ourselves. Is it really true of our own experience when we make this statement? Or are we just appropriating the Advaita teaching in order to avoid having to face our own fear and anger? It is easy to tell. Just ask yourself if there is any desire to get rid of these feelings. If the answer is, “Yes,” then it shows that we do not deeply feel and understand that everything is an expression of consciousness.

  If the answer is, “No, I have no desire to get rid of these feelings,” then we have to ask ourselves why we did not completely accept the situation about which we became fearful or angry, in the first place. Surely that too was a perfect expression of consciousness and, while it may require an appropriate response, there would be no reason for fear or anger. However, if you understand and feel deeply that everything is an expression of consciousness, that’s perfect. Live from that understanding and you will be a beacon.