Sunrise

The Magic of Silence

Katherine Tingley

In the sacredness of the silence, great and wonderful things are done. It is time that our present civilization woke up to this fact.

One has not to move very far away from himself to realize that the very best thoughts he has ever had, have remained for the most part unuttered. Man's greatest aspirations, his brightest dreams, his grandest hopes, have been so deep in his heart-life, in his mind, and in the silent yearnings of his better nature, that no words could utter them — so sacred are they and so little understood.

In spite of all the great efforts that have been made to spread Truth, I hold that this silent power in our hearts, in our longings, in our unuttered prayers, tells of better things for humanity all the time, just as far as our motives are unselfish and impersonal. Consider everything that happens in our waking and in our sleeping, in our thinking and in our talking, and still more in our silences. Is it understood or even dreamed, that one's most beautiful and helpful ideas come in the silence?

Think of the glory and mystery of the beautiful flowers! In the early springtime we have little evidence that anything is waiting for us; and then, almost in a day, from all parts of the earth, everywhere, come these messengers of silence! There is certainly a mystery about them. We cannot yet fully tell what the wonderful processes are that have brought these flowers to such perfection. We do not know how long ago the first seed of them was planted!

There is so much that we meet in our everyday lives that we cannot explain, that we do not understand. And the reason is that we have removed ourselves so far away from our higher source of knowledge — the better part of us, the nobler, aspiring, eternal part, which is to be found only in the silence.

The other part of us belongs in a sense only to the outer world, to the mortal man, to the one lifetime. Hug to your heart the idea that you are divine in essence. Believe that the best of yourself is to be found in the silence, when your soul is seeking recognition. Yet — it is so lonely! The soul of humanity is so lonely, because men live so much on the outer plane and so little in the inner field of the aspirations, and the hopes, and the consciousness of their essential divinity.

We have been educated for ages to look outside of ourselves for help; so most people have tried to penetrate through the mysteries of life with the brain-mind alone, and have never reached the Real; because they have depended upon external help instead of retiring into the silence of their deeper natures and feeling their own heart-throbs, and challenging and questioning themselves. They do not reach It, because struggling humanity has for ages been continually reminded of its mistakes, its weaknesses, its 'sins.'

So men have had little time left for finding out who they are, where they come from, and whither they go. They have had little to satisfy their souls. There are some things that may satisfy a limited mind — the brain-mind — because that mind may be yet psychologized with the unrest of the age. It may mean well, but it does not know itself; consequently it does not aspire. Our purpose is to bring home to the human mind the consciousness of its own essential divinity, of its power to direct and control its life, for there are thousands and thousands in the world today who are seeking the Light and the Truth.

(From Sunrise magazine, May 1953; copyright © 1953 Theosophical University Press)



If we impinge, never so lightly, on the life of a fellow-mortal the touch of our personality, like the ripple of a stone cast into a pond, widens and widens, in unending circles, through the aeons till the far-off gods themselves cannot tell where action ceases. — Kipling


Theosophical University Press Online Edition