Silence and Transcendent Presence

Bonsaint, Romeo J

It is not sleep man needs, it is the silence.

-Laurence Craig-Green

True silence is rest to the mind, and it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body; nourishment and refreshment.

-William Penn

HUMAN BEINGS ARE ENDOWED with a unique capacity: the gift of speech. By means of language, we give expression to our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. Language enables us to communicate with each other in simple and complex ways and to contribute to the formation of life and world. We could say that the word-our participation in language-is the condition for a truly human world. What would we know of "world" and our presence in it without the instrumentality of language?

Alongside the distinctively human capacity for verbal expression, we have an equally potent endowment for silence. Because we speak and express ourselves through language, we can also choose to refrain from speech. We can remain silent. As Max Picard points out in The World of Silence,1 this choice is not a merely negative phenomenon. If we believe that in silence "nothing happens," we may conclude that silence is indeed negative, a non-act. In reality, though, silence can be as expressive as the spoken word. When we keep silence purposefully, we engage in a positive act: we do something with and by our silence. Understood in this way, silence becomes a communicative act that achieves parity with speech. "Silence speaks," as we say.

Silence and speech are, in fact, profoundly related to each other. Authentic speech depends on silence, for silence enhances the expression of our uniqueness in movement, gesture, and word. True words in turn foster access to the depths of silence from which thoughtful speech flows. Thomas Merton believed, for example, that "if preaching is not born of silence, it is a waste of time."2

Our distinctively human capacity for silence is more than what happens when conditions favor peace and quiet. While times of quiet in which we get away from it all are valuable and necessary, the most formative dimensions of silence cannot be appreciated simply as the absence of noise or as external circumstances that foster opportunities for a much-needed respite. A peaceful setting and the absence of noise set up the conditions for interior silence, but they do not create it. At best, external silence serves as a facilitating condition for the deeper, more valuable experience of interior silence.3

The silence that is experienced in being quiet and alone is not yet the deepest and most satisfying silence to be had. The heart's desire is for the Eternal, a level of silence that is penetrating in its power to draw forth the secret communication of the soul. It is in this sense that we discover that silence speaks and that we learn how poor we are when we do not abide in this dimension. In this great silence, our being finds its roots in God, is nurtured inwardly, and gradually expands into a form of life that is itself eternal.

St. Augustine's Confessions recounts an extraordinary experience, sometimes referred to as "the Vision at Ostia." At the start of Book IX, chapter 10, "not long before the day on which she was to leave this life," Monica and her son Augustine are resting after a long journey. Leaning from a window overlooking the courthouse garden, they are alone, away from the crowd, opening themselves up together to the mystery: "Our conversation was serene and joyful. We had forgotten what we had left behind and were intent on what lay before us. (Phil 3:13) In the presence of Truth, which is yourself, we were wondering what the eternal life of the saints would be like..., (and) we laid the lips of our hearts to the heavenly stream that flows from your fountain, the source of all life which is in you."4 Augustine describes a mystical experience in which he and his mother "passed beyond...to that place of everlasting plenty... [and] for one fleeting moment reached out and touched" eternal Wisdom.5 Before returning to the sound of their own speech, they are given a vision of the plenitude of God's eternal silence. Augustine muses on the riches of this silence:

Suppose that the heavens and even his (man's) soul were silent, no longer thinking of itself but passing beyond; suppose...every tongue and every sign and all that is transient grew silent-for all these things have the same message to tell: We did not make ourselves, but he who abides forever made us. Suppose after giving us this message...they fell silent and he alone should speak to us...in his own voice, the voice of the one we love in all of these created things.6

The Vision at Ostia is made more extraordinary for having been a shared experience. Only rarely could one expect this level of silence to emerge in company. Even if the conditions of external silence prevailed at a given moment, it is unlikely that persons would be similarly attuned and prayerfully present as Augustine and Monica were to a shared disclosure of the mystery. Their common belief, their evident desire for God, and their ability to speak openly about spiritual longings disposed them toward a transcendent experience of communion with God and each other.

Types of Silence

Thus far we have distinguished between two levels of silence-exterior and interior. In "The Place of Silence in Merton's Life and Thought," John F. Teehan characterizes these two levels as "shallow" and "deep." Shallow silence is characterized by tranquility and passivity; on this level cognitive discriminations are minimal or nonexistent. In deep silence, by contrast, a person temporarily transcends awareness of self as he or she becomes absorbed by the allencompassing silence of mystical experience. Teehan observes that deep silence is frequently postulated in mystical narratives as an essential feature of union with God, enlightenment, or harmony with nature.7 In the Vision at Ostia, both levels of silence are present: there is outer silence and the absence of clamor, as well as the movement of transcendence as Augustine and Monica reach out and are touched momentarily by eternal Wisdom.

In addition to these two levels of silence, Teehan discerns three types of silence associated with various spiritual traditions: Catholic monasticism and mysticism, Orthodox hesychasm, the Society of Friends, Sufism, Upanishadic Hinduism, classical Taoism, and some schools of Mahayana Buddhism-namely, public, ascetical, and meditational silence.8 Public or ritual silence is perhaps the most familiar form. It is employed in the Catholic Mass, the Quaker meeting, ancient Jewish temple rites, and Buddhist Ashram ceremonies to foster solemnity, reverence, recollection, and a sense of mystery. Ritual quiet contrasts with the sounds of music, song, sermon, and vocal prayer, enhancing the involvement of participants in the ritual as a whole. Ascetical silence is the deliberate practice of "keeping silent" in order to eliminate everyday chatter and to foster patience, equanimity, charity, and detachment. Merton considered ascetical silence to have a purifying effect on the soul. Accordingly, he viewed the need for quiet time to read, study, meditate, and not speak to anyone as essential in the formation of an interior life of prayer.9 Silence associated with meditation directs attention away from everyday rationative and emotional turbulence, fosters inner calm, and makes the meditator more aware of his innermost self.10

These three types of silence are related to transcendent presence. In each of these forms of silence, we become more aware not only of the mystery of our own presence but also of the all-encompassing mystery of God. Without the deepening of self-presence that occurs in the silences of ritual, ascetical practices, and meditation, the Divine would remain largely undisclosed to us. As Max Picard writes, "Silence points to a state where only being is valid: the state of the Divine. The mark of the Divine in things is preserved by their connection with the world of silence."11

Silence, Solitude, and Self-Emergence

Human beings need space in which to grow. This is especially true for inner growth, for flourishing as a unique and original personality. Although we start out in life as completely dependent on the nurturance of caregivers, the process of maturing is a series of stages in which the individual gradually becomes grounded inwardly. The movement is from reliance on what is without to what sustains and motivates us from within. As we might expect, silence plays a crucial role in this process of creating the kind of space that is congenial for inner growth.

In 1958, the famous British child psychologist D. W. Winnicott published a paper entitled, "The Capacity to be Alone." The paper describes the transitional space that enables the child to begin to "go forth" on its own. This, of course, could not happen without the mother, who is there but just far enough away for the child to feel safe as it ventures forth as a secure and separate ego. The child has the experience of "being alone in the presence of the mother."12 The mother is silently occupied but has not forgotten the child, who does require her presence in this instrumental way. The mother is there in an undemanding way and thus can be absent from the child's mind: "He is safe enough to lose himself'13 in his own endeavor.

The experience of being held is formative in a child's life: "The infant's first environment, in Winnicott's terms, is the experience of being held. It begins before birth and covers the early maternal care that makes possible the infant's psychosomatic integration."14 This "holding environment" is of primary significance and includes "the way the child is held in its mother's mind as well as in her arms."15

It is easy to see how silent trust and belief in the mother's care, and beyond her to a potentially trustable world, originate in a "holding environment" that is both physical and spiritual. The way the child is held and handled during these early years is the source and prototype of future forays into self-realization, the capacity for authentic solitude being dependent upon trust in the holding environment that is one's world and, ultimately, the presence of the Spirit in one's life. As we mature into autonomous and self-reliant individuals, however, the responsibility for creating a healthy and productive environment for personal deepening falls to the individual him/herself.

In My Dinner with Andre, for example, Andre Gregory declares that he reached a point in life where

I just had to put myself into a kind of training program to learn how to be a human being.... And the only way I could think of to find out was to just cut out all the noise around me and stop performing for a few moments and just listen to what was inside me. I think there comes a time when you need to go to the Sahara, and maybe you can do it at home. But you need to cut out the noise.16

Prior to this declaration, Gregory has spoken about the need for places and the space that fosters human unfolding. Without silence and strategic withdrawal from the noisy world as a necessary holding environment, we cannot learn to listen to what is inside us, and we cannot flourish inwardly. Silence and solitude return us to what is deepest inside of us. As Max Picard writes, "Silence..., which is always at our disposal..., brings us back again to the original beginning of all things (where) everything can begin again, everything can be re-created."17

The following narrative describes another person's experience of withdrawing from the noisy world. After years of living in a city environment, the narrator moves to the country, where silence and solitude provide an opportunity for a whole new level of self-emergence and communion to flourish in his life:

The initial "invitation" to live more silently came about quite unexpectedly. At first, I only sensed the enjoyableness of walking in the woods, and a heightened attentiveness evoked by the different kinds of trees, bushes, and small animals like birds, rabbits, etc. Rather quickly I began to realize that I was spending a good deal of time walking about, an enjoyable activity that dated back to my childhood experience of growing up in a very rural part of this country but one that I had for a long time neglected since all of my adult life had been spent living in various large cities. Previously, my at-home experience was characterized by activities such as reading, listening to the radio and television viewing, and other similar experiences-all of which took place in the house. With this shift in at-home activities, I soon began to realize sharply that I was now living and preferring a more silent mode of presence whenever I was at home and away from my work in which speaking with others and its attendant stimulation are a basic part of the workaday experience.

In this new experience of living in the country I began to realize that many things that I was used to doing, like listening daily to television news, watching special television programs faithfully at least a few times every week, etc., I now found that I could do without. In other words the typical things that I did when at home began to change; and I discovered happily that routine activities that I habitually engaged in when at home could be changed, could be let go with no experience of loss. Letting go of these habitual activities did not happen due to any deliberative choice. This change followed naturally upon my flowing with the increasing affinity for walking in the woods, becoming attentive to the world of nature in my new surroundings, with the enjoyment of the stillness of my surroundings.18

Gradually the narrator comes to the realization that the inwardly quieting experience is important to him in a personal way: "I began to desire this experience more and more. Silence became a positive hunger.... This healing wordless communion became an important facet of my everyday life in a way I had never experienced before."19

Communion with one's surroundings is itself a form of holding environment that makes possible an even higher experience of communion, namely, the experience of communion with all-that-is and with one's fellow human beings. For in silence we enter an invisible space that is the common property of all people. In the intimacy of thought, writes Louis Lavelle, all individuals can commune.20 The mature ability to create spiritual space within oneself enables us to enter a silence in which all persons are potentially present and recipients of "a common revelation."21 The spiritual space won by silence and solitude ultimately does not separate us from each other but draws us all together. In the realm of creative silence "the individual and the community...face the silence together. The difference between the individual and the community ceases to be important in the face of the power of silence."22

Silence and Transformation

There is a strong connection between silence and faith. Max Picard believed that the sphere of faith and the sphere of silence belong together. "Silence," he wrote "is the natural basis on which the nature of faith is accomplished."23 Silence helps the questing spirit in us to encounter the mystery and to experience that we are always being held. It is no surprise that silence is recommended by all of the great spiritual traditions and by spiritual teachers throughout the ages: "Be still and know that I am God" (Ps 46:10). "Stillness is the greatest revelation" (Lao Tzu). Meister Eckhart taught his listeners to "go into your own ground" of silence and learn to know yourself there. St. John of the Cross heard "silent music" and declared that it was only in silence that we would hear God speaking to the soul. For Elizabeth of the Trinity, silence enables God to create a beloved solitude within the soul. Echoing scripture, she reminds us that "God is watching over you like a mother over her little child" (Is 49). The contemporary poet Charles Simic conjures up an image of the mystic Jacob Boehme sipping tea at the kitchen table and warning of "the quiet / To which the wise must school themselves."24

The silence in which we draw close to God in faith and find spiritual repose is the deep silence spoken of by Thomas Merton. It is the kind of silence that occurs in meditation and keeps those who meditate striving for an ever-deeper experience of spiritual presence. The practice of meditation is the practice of silence.25 Meditational silence has as its goal a certain kind of stillness and rest:

A mind that is fast is sick. / A mind that is slow is sound. A mind that is still is divine. (Meher Baba)

Refresh God by resting in Him; / Listen to all that is being sung in His Soul, / in His Heart. (Elizabeth of the Trinity)

We have to climb up to this kind of silence.... Then without doing anything [in contemplation], silence will do everything in us.

(Thomas Keating)26

It is humbling and hopefully inspiring to know that the need for silence, repose, and meditation was felt even in the lives of Jesus and the Buddha. Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed (Lk 5:16) and frequently called his disciples aside to rest and refresh their spirits. Gotama withdrew from his activities three times each day to meditate, and certain times of the year were set aside for intensive periods of spiritual practice. This "pattern of withdrawal and return"27 enabled them to integrate periods of silent meditation into their lives and to their being able to lead lives of tremendous compassion and engagement in the world. They were living models of integration who continue to call people to deepen their lives in the practice of silence.

The transformative effects of meditational silence are also exemplified in the lives of the great mystics. We shall mention but two in the space of this essay: Kabir, the renowned fifteenth-century Indian mystic, and St. John of the Cross, the sixteenth-century Carmelite mystic and Doctor of the Church. Both were poets, and it is to their poetry that we turn to hear about the power of silence in their progress toward God. The ecstatic poet Kabir gives us a description of what can happen when we enter the world of meditational silence:

Kabir calls his reader to enter within and to discover the Lord who is in each of us as a "seed of new life." In the midst of that inner world, a million suns are ablaze with light, and the fever of life is stilled. We must hearken to the call of silence: Hark to the unstruck bells and drums! In meditation, reason is abandoned in favor of the movement of love in the soul. Kabir celebrates the joyful music that occurs as the soul encounters God in transcendent silence.

John of the Cross shares his profound conviction of the reality of spiritual presence in his poem "Surely I know the spring that flows." he is speaking of an experience that happens "even during the night," in silence and unknowing, as it were. What he receives from this deeply hidden spring surpasses everything in beauty. Both heaven and earth are given drink from the limitless depths of this silent spring. The poem is quoted in part:

Surely I know the spring that swiftly flows

even during the night.

The eternal spring is deeply hidden,

but surely I know the place where it begins

even during the night.

I don't know its source because it has none

but know that all beginnings come from this one,

even during the night.

I do know that nothing can equal its beauty

and that from it both heaven and earth drink

even during the night.

I know there is no limit to its depth

and no one can wade across its breadth,

even during the night.

Its brightness is never clouded over,

and I know that from it all light flows,

even during the night.29

These poems witness to a profound effect of meditational silence: namely, the transformation of perception and vision. Kabir sees a world bathed in light, miraculous in its manifestations of color and pervaded by a Love that few ever perceive. John of the Cross "sees" in the night, carried along by a hidden current that reveals the sourceless beginnings and unimaginable beauty of transcendent presence. We learn from these testimonies that the life of the senses undergoes a change as we are gradually transformed by the practice of meditational silence and the graces it offers to the soul.

John of the Cross is the great scientist of sensory deprivation. His program of asceticism purifies the senses not only by means of mortification but more especially by silencing and calming them. During meditation the senses get a break. But to what end? That there might be greater enjoyment in them. Enjoyment is a spiritual quality for John. The practice of silence and healthy deprivation frees us to enjoy all of creation more directly, with the appropriate appreciation and awe that we should feel. Closing our eyes and sitting in silent meditation even for short periods of time can be a revelation. Christ slumbering in our souls may awaken during this silent respite. When we open our eyes after an experience of deep meditation, we see the "more" that we often miss: objects in our room that we take for granted suddenly stand out in their individual distinctness; the scene outside the window is more vivid, alive. We too are more present, less distracted and divided as we re-engage in the world.

The experience of perception transformed-"knowing creatures through God and not God through creatures"-is captured stunningly by John of the Cross in one of the most beautiful passages in all of spiritual literature:

This awakening is a movement of the Word in the substance of the soul, containing such grandeur, dominion, and glory, and intimate sweetness that it seems to the soul that all the balsams and fragrant spices and flowers of the world are commingled, stirred, and shaken so as to yield their sweet odor, and that all the kingdoms and dominions of the world and all the powers and virtues of heaven are moved; and not only this, but it also seems that all the virtues and substances and perfections and graces of every created thing glow and make the same movement all at once.30

Keeping Silent for the Love of God

Union with God in daily life requires silence. It requires ascetical silence in which we block out the noise of the world, and it calls for a movement of transcendence in which we go beyond ourselves toward "God [who] is peace and a stranger to noise and agitation."31 St. Ephrem the Syrian would seem to have understood well that true silence is beyond ego and belongs to eternity,32 when he prayed, "May our souls behold your wonders in that quiet which is more than silence." Practically speaking, what can we do to foster this movement of transcendence in our lives? Can we move beyond the restlessness of our own egos to let silence influence our presence in the world? Max Picard observed that a person in whom

the substance of silence is still an active force carries the silence into every movement.... The nobility of such a person comes from carrying the silence into the world. S/he is not paralyzed by the quietness in which s/he lives out his/her life, for the quietness is related to the silence and the silence extends to the frontiers of his/her life.33

There is a long tradition in various spiritual systems of emphasizing the value of keeping silence. In the Christian spiritual tradition this is often presented in terms of keeping silent "for the love of God." Keeping silence in this way is not viewed as negative, as an absence, but rather as a positive act that brings one into communion with God. We are keeping, preserving something that is worth protecting. It may be words that should not be squandered or feelings better left undisclosed until the right time to express them comes along. Although keeping silent may go against the immediate gratification of the ego, it is, in fact, an act that disciplines the spirit and brings about enjoyment of a new kind. One grows in self-possession and becomes more present to oneself and others. Soren Kierkegaard wrote that to pause-to wait-is a movement of the heart in which one deepens oneself in inwardness. He also believed that "only someone who knows how to remain essentially silent can really talk-and truly act."34

Recently a small book appeared in France that was originally published in 1771. It is called L'Art de se taire (The Art of Keeping Silent) and possesses numerous gems on the subject. The following are my translations from the French:

Just as there is a time to speak, there is a time to be silent.

Never do we possess ourselves more than when we are in silence.

Keeping silence has priority; we only know how to speak well when we have learned to be silent first.

We must silence language, but make the silence speak.

People teach us to speak, but it pertains to God to teach us perfectly how we must keep silence.

The first degree of wisdom is to know how to be silent; the second, to know how to be moderate in discourse; the third is to know how to speak much without speaking unwisely or saying too much.35

The author of the text extends his analysis to the sphere of writing:

It is necessary to prepare to write in silence and study.... Why do you rush, transported by the passion to be an author? Wait-you will know how to write when you have known how to be silent and to think well.36

The art of keeping silence is the source of our spiritual dispositions. It teaches us to find solace in solitude and to dwell with the mystery at the center of our lives. It promotes attentiveness and the ability to listen respectively to others. It helps us to cultivate a spirit of awe and reverence. As we grow in our ability to keep silent for the love of God, our union with God in the everyday circumstances of life becomes a reality that incarnates and expresses itself in all dimensions of human presence.

NOTES

1. Max Picard, The World of Silence (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, Inc., 1988).

2. Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas (New York, 1953), pp. 266-267.

3. See John F. Teehan's "The Place of Silence in Thomas Merlon's Life and Thought," in Patrick Hart, The Message of Thomas Merton (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1981), pp. 91-114.

4. St. Augustine, Confessions (Great Britain: Penguin Books, 1961), pp. 196-197.

5. Ibid., p. 197.

6. Ibid., p. 198.

7. Teehan, pp. 92-94.

8. Ibid.

9. Merton, Sign of Jonas, pp. 266-267.

10. Teehan, pp. 92-94.

11. Picard, p. 20

12. Adam Phillips, Winnicott (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 28.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., p. 30.

15.Ibid.

16. Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, My Dinner With Andre, Screenplay for the film by Louis Malle (New York: Grove Press, 1981), pp. 108-109.

17. Picard, pp. 21-22.

18. Charles D. Maes, "The Silent Mode of Presence," Doctoral Dissertation, Duquesne University, 1978, pp. 1-2.

19. Ibid.

20. Louis Lavelle, The Dilemma of Narcissus. Trans. W. T. Gairdner (Burdett, N.Y.: Larson Publications, 1993), pp. 210-211.

21. Ibid., p. 168.

22. Picard, p. 65.

23. Ibid., p. 227.

24. Charles Simic, "First Frost," in The Voice at 3:00 A.M. (Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2003), p. 10.

25. Osho, What is Meditation? (Great Britain: Element Books Limited, 1995), pp. 20-21.

26. Thomas Keating, Intimacy With God (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002), p. 153.

27. Huston Smith's classic study The World's Religions, originally titled The Religions of Man (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964), p. 133.

28. Eknath Easwaran, God Makes the Rivers to Flow (Tomales, Calif.: Nilgiri Press, 1991), p. 112.

29. The Poems of St. John of the Cross. Trans. Ken Krabbenhoft (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1999), pp. 43, 45.

30. The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross. Trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1973), p. 644.

31. Nil Sorsky, quoted in Jean-Yves Leloup, Being Still: Reflections on an Ancient Mystical Tradition. Trans. M. S. Laird, OSA (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 2003), p. 129.

32. Ibid., p. 21.

33. Picard, p. 64.

34. Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard, compiled and edited by Charles E. Moore (Farmington, Pa.: The Plough Publishing House, 2002), pp. 373-374.

35. Abbe Dinouart, L'Art de se taire, (Grenoble: Editions Jerome Millon, 2002), pp. 23,29, 38, 39, 40.

36. Ibid., p. 29.

Romeo J. Bonsaint, SC, PhD

Br. Romeo J. Bonsaint, SC, Ph.D., is co-director of Resources in Spiritual Formation in Danvers, Massachusetts, which offers courses, seminars, and retreats in formative spirituality. Br. Romeo holds a master's degree and a doctorate in Formative Spirituality from Duquesne University. His dissertation Formative Speaking and the Integration of Human Life contains several chapters on silence as preparatory to speaking. He can be reached at Xavier Center, 21 Spring Street, Danvers, MA 01923 and rjbonsaint@aol.com.

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