Blankness and Silence

Is any personal aspiration necessary during the state of blankness or self-forgetfulness? I ask this because once you wrote that if the silence is deep there is no need of personal aspiration; let the silence itself work.

Blankness is only a condition in which realisation has to come. If aspiration is needed for that, it has to be used; if the realisation comes of itself, then of course aspiration is not necessary.

You once wrote that aspiration is not needed in the state of blankness.

The “state” I was speaking of was not blankness but something else — I see by reference to the passage in your letter that it was a “state in which aspiration is not needed.” Such a state is not blankness but a condition in which the Mother’s Force is present to the consciousness and doing everything.

In any case, if the aspiration is used there is no harm at least. Is it not so?

No.

What kind of “realisation” did you mean when you wrote, “Blankness is only a condition in which the realisation has to come”?

Every kind of realisation — infinite self, cosmic consciousness, the Mother’s Presence, Light, Force, Ananda, Knowledge, Sachchidananda realisation, the different layers of consciousness up to the Supermind. All these can come in the silence which remains but ceases to be blank.

If blankness is only a condition in which realisation has to come, what is the difference between the blankness and the silence?

The silence can remain when the blankness has gone. All sorts of things can pour in and yet the silence still remains, but if you become full of force, light, Ananda, knowledge etc, you cannot call yourself blank any longer.

What are the stages of the silence? Is the non-existence one of them?

In the silence one comes to feel the Existence, not the non-existence, and afterwards all that is in the Divine Existence by direct realisation.

What is this Existence?

What one feels first is the pure existence of the self, without any idea, characteristic or movement — existence pure and simple, Sat Brahman — or else one feels that and a vast peace and wideness. Afterwards other things are felt such as Ananda, but always with this as the basis.

I have not tried to analyse mentally what I feel exactly in the silence. I took it as non-existence simply because once you wrote to me that it is only I who feel the silence as empty.

You must have misunderstood what I wrote. I cannot have written that it is only you who feel the silence as empty, as there are plenty who do so feel it at first. One feels it empty because one is accustomed to associate existence with thought, feeling and movement or with forms and objects, and there are none of these there. But it is not really empty.

The physical mind is still so active, in spite of the fact that several parts of the being remain in muteness.

If the silence is sufficiently intense, then no activity of the mind or anything else can disturb it.

Yesterday I tried to bring down the Mother’s Force into the silence in order to make it solid and dynamic, as suggested by you. Was it all right?

If there is no disturbance of the silence, it is all right.

Only a few days ago I was moving in a dark inertia — suggestions, turmoil, depression etc. Now I am in full peace and silence. Is this due to any conquest in the general Nature?

No, it is personal.

During this peace and silence, should not my aspiration also be strengthened and constant?

Not necessarily. The peace and silence are only a basis. Into that there must come a transformation of the active consciousness.

Sometime ago there was an overpowering peace and silence. When they descended into the physical they were met with a strong resistance. The present excess of inertia is the result of that resistance. This is what happens regularly at every descent into the body consciousness. Is this not true?

Yes.