The Value of Silence
Partial transcript of a dialogue in Alaska in 1995.
INTERLOCUTOR: What do you mean when you say “silence is listening to thought as if it was another sound?”
RUBEN FELDMAN GONZALEZ: That is Unitary Perception.
When you decide to listen without language, without any spoken word, what happens? Have you tried it?
INTERLOCUTOR: No, not yet.
R.F.G.: See by yourself. When the spoken word stops, only the unspoken words remain. The unspoken words are what we call “thought.”
Then, when you listen in complete silence of the mind, that listening is also perceiving thought as if it was another sound.
Unitary Perception is perception of everything perceptible “outside” and everything perceptible “within” at the same time.
If you live constantly and consistently in Unitary Perception, without much effort at all, you will see that at some moment thought comes to an end.
That moment is “the crucial moment,” the moment of bliss.
That is the beginning of the second silence: a joy which is wordless. That second silence, totally wordless silence, is the beginning of true life (or Zoé in Greek).
In Spanish they call it “Bienaventuranza,” but no word ever will be able to describe what happens in a wordless state or movement of the mind.
Such a mind is in touch with timeless reality.
Time can be understood as absolute, as relative and as irrelevant.
When time becomes irrelevant in Unitary Perception, then timeless reality starts.
I can meet with you punctually in timeless reality.
INTERLOCUTOR: But you will not meet me in timeless reality unless you have a good reason.
R.F.G.: Of course. It will not be to gossip or chatter over a cup of tea.
INTERLOCUTOR: What about just being silent over a cup of tea?
R.F.G.: That could be a good reason!
INTERLOCUTOR: (Laughs)
-SILENCE . . .
But then, whatever thought produces will not be the timeless reality, right?
R.F.G.: No, because thought is bound by time. It evolves and moves within time. Thought is the creator of time. Thought is the accumulation (in time) of knowledge, memories, experience.
Thought is always seeking some kind of experience: sex, entertainment, planning to achieve pleasure, position, profit.
All that happens within time.
When you ask: “How can I achieve the second silence?” You are only stimulating your thought and not wordless silence.
If you want to be free to listen, to look and to understand anything or anybody then you need a completely silent, wordless mind.
INTERLOCUTOR: But I can't be free of everything my mind knows.
Everything my mind knows has become language and words.
R.F.G.: You can suspend language and everything your mind knows, just to be able to freely see and freely listen and freely read and freely understand and freely reject what is false.
Nobody will tell you what is false. You’ll have to find out by yourself, in great silence.
INTERLOCUTOR: Sometimes, very rarely though, my mind is very quiet, without any desire to keep quiet, without any fear, without any wish to do or plan anything, without any wish to explain the silence to anyone.
R.F.G.: If you can see the value of that, you know what true life can be. But if you want that quiet mind, then your mind is not quiet. If you continue remembering, longing, pushing, comparing, interpreting, seeking and asking there will be only agitation, not a quiet, silent, peaceful mind.
INTERLOCUTOR: Then you live like a monk.
R.F.G.: You are comparing, because you don't know the value of silence yet.
You don't need to be a monk, you don't need to be anything in particular if your mind is wordlessly silent and listening to all sound at the same time.
Living with a silent mind is a new life for which no word can be adequate. The new life of the silent mind is beyond words. That mind is intelligent, sensitive, alert, honest, truly fit for a true life.
Such a mind is very quiet but it is the source of all action, the foundation of every action.
A mind without conflict creates no conflict.
INTERLOCUTOR: There must be something that you can do to facilitate silence of the mind.
R.F.G.: Yes. Suspend language. Listen without your own words. Let me ask you a very important question: What happens when nothing happens?
(PAUSE)
See . . . we generally go to sleep (in wakefulness) when we have no sex, no fun, not watching a movie, or a game of football, or starting an argument or a war. Well, when nothing happens we can still be living a full life, so every moment is full of life when the mind is completely still, completely silent. A silent mind perceives everything with no words and no images.
I can repeat to you the description of Unitary Perception and tell you it is the beginning of joy, energy, peace, true relationships and perhaps even contact with the most sacred . . . but if you don't do it you don't do it.
INTERLOCUTOR: It looks like my own mind wants you to repeat all this endlessly but it doesn't start the right action by itself.
R.F.G.: Which tells you what?
Do you see the importance of what you have just said?
Our mind has been conditioned during millennia to be busy-minded, never to be empty-minded.
Everybody and everything tell us to be busy, to achieve, to be successful, to look for profit, to seek pleasure, prestige, position, influence . . . anger, fear and sorrow are not seen as the poison of life, but rather overvalued as something wonderful.
They tell us (and we believe it) that if you don't show your teeth in anger a few times every day you are nothing or you will become nothing (which is seen as something terrible and not as reality).
INTERLOCUTOR: You don't mean we are nothing.
R.F.G.: I hope you are not getting defensive.
Simply see that we are constantly seeking to be something or somebody.
In such a way there is never a moment of peace in the mind. The mind is forever full with its own projection (words and thought, words and thought, desire and fear, fear and desire) and so it can never be in true contact with anything or anybody.
Only a completely silent mind can have a relationship with someone. A good dialogue is impossible without a silent mind.
We stuff our minds with ideologies, beliefs, information, rejections and predilections and in such a way we isolate ourselves.
Men built cities not to be lonely and now they are lonely in the cities. Or else they gather in gangs to sell drugs and kill each other.
We are so full of words, words, words, that nothing else can enter our mind.
We want to be somebody but we are not even aware of our body in space. This awareness or incarnation can happen only in Unitary Perception.
This incarnation in Unitary Perception is the beginning of love but thought cannot recognize love. As long as the word “love” emerges to the mind, love ends.
The word “love” is not the reality of love.
And only this reality beyond words, call it Unitary Perception, or love or Christ only that can solve the problems of mankind.
But we want to solve problems created by words and thought (like war and hunger and overpopulation) with more words and thought.
When the brain stops creating words and thought, only then it can be in complete touch with creation.
That contact with creation is the beginning of a New Life without conflict.
INTERLOCUTOR: How can the brain stop verbalization?
R.F.G.: Do you perceive the question?
I say the how is the empty, silent mind without words.
If you still ask “how” then the mind is repeating the only process it knows: verbalization and thought.
The word silence is not silence.
The truly inquisitive mind is completely silent.
You have to be completely alert in Unitary Perception to see how the mind repeats itself through words and thoughts that it knows.
If you do this subtly and sensitively, then “silence is listening to thought as if it was another “sound.”
When the only thing left is listening to sound then thought has come to an end.
If your house is on fire you don't ask “How will I stop the fire?” You simply run for water!
If you have the same sudden and intense insight about the need for ego to end and if you understand that a silent mind is the most important thing in life you will stop asking “how” and you will stop all verbalization.
But do you truly see the urgent need for a silent mind?
INTERLOCUTOR: I fear I may not be able to survive in this crazy and cruel world with a mind like that.
RFG: In Unitary Perception you will be more able and you will not merely survive, you will live a true life without conflict.
Do you need to live with anger?
Do you want to keep your sorrows and your fear of death, fear of unemployment, fear of war and fear of loneliness?
A peaceful mind is not a pacifist mind.
A peaceful mind is the true source of peace and economic balance in the whole world.
The purpose of life is the creation of a complete man. Present society barely helps us to survive without any consideration for the creation of a complete man, able to transcend himself.
Without a silent mind there cannot be completion or wholeness for the mind. The creation of a silent mind is not a goal of present so called “education.”
You may only have a belief, a theory or an idea about wholeness or holiness or consummation, but that has little or no meaning at all.
If you are sad, and angry and lonely, you can only relate to yourself, to your own thoughts, to more of the same: more words.
If you live in fear and rage, you live in isolation.
Don't you fear to continue living in fear?
INTERLOCUTOR: Laughter.
From: Beyond Silence
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