The Power of a Quiet Mind

Modern civilization puts a premium on the mental process. We educate our children with a focus on the mind. We want them to learn verbal skills, reading skills, logical skills and measure them on their abilities in these areas with various forms of standardized tests by which we then classify them based on their capabilities in this regard.

We under-value different forms of intelligence that may be based on the capacities of the physical body, the vital nature or the emotional being. Empathy and insight are less valued than mental, linear logic.

We fill the minds of the chidlren with facts, arguments and chatter. We create an atmosphere, with social media, internet, mass media, constant blaring of music or talk radio, that elminates silence of the mind and keeps the mind occupied and vibrating with the energies moving in the exte
al world. We raise generations of human beings who are alienated from the quiet mind and its powers of receptivity, intuition and understanding.

Spiritual disciplines try, in many cases, to break the habits of mental chatter. Raja Yoga in particular asks the practitioner to focus on observing the mind-stuff, chitta, and bringing it to a state of quiescence, such that it becomes like a body of water without a ripple, or like a mirror that reflects the exact image it receives without distortion.

Other disciplines use mantras, to first remove the distracting forces that vibrate the mind-stuff, and then, the mantra itself can be dispensed with. Visualization, contemplation on the infinite universe, devotional aspiration and consecration all can help a seeker out of the realm of mental chatter.

Sri Aurobindo describes his own experience with a practice that brought him silence of the mind. This state is not a dull, empty and ignorant state, but one that is alert, luminous and receptive. When the mind falls silent, new, higher powers of awareness are able to enter and act.

For those who have been habituated to the mental process, the quieting of the mind, initially, is a scary event. They wonder if they are losing their minds, if they are becoming incompetent to think and act, if they have lost their ability to live and act in the society and carry out whatever role they have to play. In a certain state if they pass over the border into another level of consciousness, a state akin to what is known as samadhi, they even become afraid that they are going to die. This is the fear of the ego-consciousness when it loses its limiting frame. The seeker eventually learns to accept this status of quiet mind and receptivity and he can then benefit from the status.

Rene Descartes famously proclaimed, ‘cogito, ergo sum.’ (I think, therefore I am.) He epitomised the predomiant attachment to the mental being and its association and identification with the ego-consciousness. In the future, as the spiritual consciousness takes on its leading role as the next stage in the evolution of consciousness, it will not be correct to associate existence with thinking. Rather, existence will be understood as a status of being that can observe, know and respond through powers that are not necessarily routed through the verbal center of the being.

The Mother observes: “The noise made by all the words, all the ideas in your head is so deafening that it prevents you from hearing the truth when it wants to manifest.”

“To learn to be quiet and silent… When you have a problem to solve, instead of turning over in your head all the possibilities, all the consequences, all the possible things one should or should not do, if you remain quiet with an aspiration for goodwill, if possible a need for goodwill, the solution comes very quickly. And as you are silent you are able to hear it.”

“When you are caught in a difficulty, try this method: instead of becoming agitated, turning over all the ideas and actively seeking solutions, of worrying, fretting, running here and there inside your head… remain quiet. And according to your nature, with ardour or peace, with intensity or widening or with all these together, implore the Light and wait for it to come.”

“In this way the path would be considerably shortened.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 4, Ordeals and Difficulties, pp..102-103