GOD IS SILEN CE The Infinite Way Study & Meditation Centre, Cape Town – Contact 083-749-8516
PIERRE LACOUT
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Many Friends who heard Pierre Lacout speak on ‘What worship means to me’ at the Conference of European and Near East Friends held at Birmingham in July 1969 expressed interest in his Dieu est Silence. The Friends Home Service Committee, in response to many requests, is glad to publish this first edition in English.
Pierre Lacout Pierre Lacout was born in 1923 at Rodez in the south of France. Attracted at an early age by the mystic life, he entered at the conclusion of his studies into the Carmelite order, where he began his initiation into the search for God at the school of Saint Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. He prepared himself for the priesthood at Rome and in his own religious diocese in the south of France, where later he was to teach theology. There in the Carmelite ‘desert’ of Requebrunesur-Argens he discovered the deep meaning of solitary contemplation. A course of psychoanalysis at the International Institute of Psychology and Psychotherapy at Geneva led him to rethink his vocation and his faith. It was in this process that he moved gradually from Catholicism to Quakerism. Both the silence of the Carmelites and the silence practised in the Religious Society of Friends are a seeking for God in simplicity, humility and love. His search therefore could continue and broaden out towards a religion without frontiers. Pierre Lacout has been a member of Switzerland Yearly Meeting since May 1964, and is in the Lausanne group of Friends. He is married and teaches French Literature at the College Pierre Viret. 3
Contents 1 God is silence 2 Give us this day our daily silence 3 Preparation for silence 4 The psychology of silence 5 Obstacles to silence 6 The art of making use of obstacles 7 The stages of silence 8 The silence of Jesus 9 Silence and pacifism
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1 GOD IS SILENCE The most simple reality, God, is the one which men have striven hardest to complicate. It has become the battle-ground of terrible conflicts, the cause of fratricidal wars. God, through the fault of man, has ceased to be a bond which unites and has become a flag to be raised on fields of battle. ‘God is dead’ we hear today. This conclusion was inevitable after so many years of sectarianism. If He is really dead, dead in the hearts and minds of men, it is because He has been crushed under the weight of indigestible abstractions and interminable discussions. To avoid adding new errors to the old ones, let us give the name ‘Silence’ to what others prefer to call ‘The Word’. Speech tends to divide men, who cling to words rather than to their meaning. Words give rise to dogmas claiming to be comforting certainties. Words give rise to religions, to churches which break up the great family of simple souls, for whom loving worship should be enough, into rival sovereign fragments. Words split apart, Silence unites. Words scatter, Silence gathers together. Words stir up, Silence brings peace. Words engender denial; Silence invites even the denier to find fresh hope in the confident expectation of a mystery which can be accomplished within him.
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In my active silence, I shall prepare myself to hear the Silence of God. “But when you pray, go into a room by yourself, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is there in the secret place; and your Father, who sees what is secret, will reward you.” Matthew, vi, 6. In this way, I find beyond the words the meaning which gives them life, the eternal Gospel which is revealed at every moment of history, to every soul irrespective of race, tradition or condition. Equality becomes a reality in the silence of reverent waiting. Privilege is done away with. If any one is privileged it is the one who is most humble and most receptive. Deep silence is the very condition for religious experience. In this deep silence there comes a Silence deeper still which is religious experience in its purest form. I want to express this experience and so I seek for the right words. And the richest words I find are the simplest, the most silent ones: Presence, Inner Light, Love, Life. Yet I am still aware how much silence is to be preferred to words. If nevertheless I speak, it is to communicate with souls whose silence is in unison with mine and who hear the Silence of God in the words I use. If I speak again it is to awaken to this silence souls ready to receive it. But I am convinced that neither the written nor the spoken word will ever be as precious as Silence. For, in the soul dwelling in silence, God himself is Silence.
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2 GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY SILENCE Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven; give us this day our daily silence Inner silence can and must become a reality at every moment of our lives. If it is an exceptional condition, it is because we are living habitually in a state of spiritual unawareness. There are so many people who, spiritually asleep, allow their lives to be filled with trivialities. Their minds and hearts are too cluttered for this Inner Light to shine clearly. No wealth is more bounteously bestowed than this Inner Light and there is none that we are less aware of. How many of us are ready to dig deeply to find this hidden treasure? How many are ready to sell all they have to possess it? “The Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure lying buried in a field. The man who found it buried it again; and for sheer joy went and sold everything he had and bought that field.” Matthew, xiii, 44 To live as though the treasure of the Inner Light were not within us is to live as though it did not exist at all.
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Here is another picture of the Kingdom of Heaven. “A merchant looking out for fine pearls found one of very special value; so he went and sold everything he had, and bought it.” Matthew, xiii, 45. On the threshold of the life of silence we must be ready to stake everything. This is why beginners are afraid, why they hesitate; and why so many give up the search. It is impossible to be spiritually aware, without cultivating this awareness. We must make up our minds, clearly and deliberately, to set aside every day a certain period of time for this life. We must not be surprised to meet difficulties in the search for this inward silence if we are under-nourished people making do, through idleness, with the weekly Meeting for Worship – sometimes not even that. It is for each one of us to ask himself what he wants, and then to want it with all his heart. Regular practice is important. The Spirit blows where it will but it only fills sails already spread. Athletes know from experience the value of training. They practise every day to improve their form. Are we to suppose that only our spiritual form can thrive on neglect or wishful thinking? Even though we do not have to embark on our spiritual training with the idea of reaching championship standards, we must nevertheless realise that only by giving of our best can we expect to achieve the best results. Daily silence experienced in humility and fervour as an indispensable exercise in spiritual nourishment gradually creates within us a permanent state of silence. The soul discovers in such a silence unsuspected possibilities. It realises that life can be lived at different levels. The fusion of action and contemplation – so difficult to achieve and yet so fruitful – stems precisely from this possibility of living simultaneously at several different levels. The silence of religious experience is never a silence in which the soul shuts itself up in isolation. It is a silence which opens out on to the infinite in a true communion of minds and hearts, in real 8
unity founded on respect for diversity. The individual silence practiced every day is an extension of, and at the same time a preparation for, the corporate silence of the Meeting for Worship. A soul gathered in silent worship is never alone with God. It is always in communion with the soul of all other worshippers; its silence plunges it into that inward light which lightens every man.
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3 PREPARATION FOR SILENCE Preparation for the practice of silence is essential if one wants to feel the gentle breeze of the Spirit. This preparation demands humility of mind and heart, and the habit of inward retirement. It is silence itself which prepares us for Silence. There is a silence even in action. We are reaching this silence when we look beyond appearances, when we broaden our horizons, when our words are steeped in the mystery of God. Words must be the vehicle of silence if we are to be the messengers of God. The active man is reaching this silence when he loses sight of himself and sees only the other man and in the other man the One who is seeking that of Himself in each of us. We are preparing ourselves for silence not once a week or once a day but at every moment when the moment is lived in faith, poverty of spirit, love and hope. That moment is sacred. That moment is the Presence, the very life of God, the breath of God breathed through the breath of man, the marriage of the eternal and the temporal, the incarnation of the Everlasting Word in our time-broken works, the tragedy of life melting away in the joy of our self-offering. How can the man who squanders this moment be ready to live fully the precious moments of Meeting for Worship when God alone must be in command? The Spirit awakens us and pardons us. But, awakened and pardoned though we be, the Spirit counts on our alert attention.
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When we have realised the full value of silent worship, we are eager to ‘prepare the way of the Lord, to make straight his paths’. We spread our sails to catch the breath of the Spirit. We labour to make our own road to God. As a starting point, we choose beforehand a theme which can gather together, not disperse, our spiritual forces. This preparation can be infinitely varied according to individual personality, character, vocation and religious experience. It might be a reading. There are passages in which the Spirit is waiting for us. They will not be the same for each individual. Each of us should make a personal anthology of those writings which the touch of the Spirit has sanctified; why not make good use of these places from which the soul can take flight? Listening to music or contemplating a work of art, or the creation of something beautiful, may suit others. Nothing is to be scorned, nothing excluded; hold on fast to any method that may prove fruitful. The yearning for God makes us resourceful. He who seeks, finds. Let us never neglect, as far as we are able, this preparation for corporate Silence. The prophetic quality of the ministry depends on it. Words spoken in Meeting can arise from springs clear or muddied, from the deep waters or from the shallows. Whether there has been preparation or not, we must not go to our silent worship paralysed by a feeling of unworthiness. ‘God is the God of the present moment’, writes Meister Eckhart, `Just as you are he finds you, receives you and takes you; not just as you were but just as you are at this moment.’
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4 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SILENCE Contemplative silence is a special form of attention. The better we understand the latter, the better we can practise the former. Malebranche tells us that attention is ‘a natural prayer by which we are enabled to be enlightened by Reason’. John of the Cross writes of contemplation that it is ‘loving attention’. The philosopher states that attention is a prayer, the mystic that prayer in its highest form is attention. Everything is to be gained, in my opinion, by such a comparison. Attention is seeing with the eyes of the spirit. It is an inward attitude. This way of seeing, this attitude, seek to fix themselves on their object, the better to grasp it, analyse it, be penetrated by it. Our eyes can be turned towards outward things, towards material realities, or inwards towards psychic realities – ideas or states of mind. Is not contemplative silence a look turned inwards to the deep realities of the soul? Silence has this peculiarity that it seeks an object which is hidden – it is a gaze fixed on the invisible. In the field of our conscious being there must be no point on which it comes to rest. It is a gaze which cannot and must not have a final objective. The man who came permanently to rest in his ideas about God, however lofty they might be, would be turning away from God: ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts.’ The man who greedily clings on to the sweet savours which may come from God is turning away from God to nourish himself on his own spiritual 12
condition. Lights are not the Light. These fragmentary pleasing experiences are not the joy and the peace which are above all satisfaction of the senses. Contemplative silence is a way of seeing which needs no object. It can only be defined as direction. It is a looking towards, not a looking at. Ideas about God are good only if I move quickly on from them. The sweet savours coming from God are good only if we leap forward from them. We must always go beyond. The Inner Light is a space without boundaries. The difficulty of Silence for beginners is precisely this absence of object. The beginner needs an object. Before contemplating he must meditate. Let him take the Gospel or other spiritual writings and nourish himself on words about God. Let him from the very beginning practise looking beyond the words. It will not be long before spiritual understanding begins to, dawn in him and this will make it possible to distinguish the words which lead into Silence from those which shine with a false brilliance. The Holy Scriptures are silent words with the power to lead the soul into silence. It is by this sign that the friends of Silence recognise them. Amongst different forms of attention psychologists make a distinction between the attention they call ‘spontaneous’ and the attention they call ‘willed’. Spontaneous attention is aroused by the object itself. The object thrusts itself upon us without any effort on our part, even at times in spite of us. Attention in this case has, as it were, a mesmeric effect forcing us to look. Advertising is the art of subjecting us to this form of violence. The product must in some way enter into us through our eyes and ears. Advertisers know that attention is always attention for something, that there must be some motivation. They strive, therefore, to play on one or other of our tendencies, our instincts, several even. Some psychologists deny the name ‘attention’ to this inferior, often degrading form of it. It is a conditioning of the mind, not the life of the spirit. True attention would always be the result of the will: a spiritual state which requires an effort for its creation.
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The life of silence is always a willed attention. It demands long effort and always requires consent, the giving of oneself. But there is a tendency for the self to become mesmerised, possessed by it. The fully developed religious life becomes a mystic life. For some ‘mystic’ is synonymous with ‘exceptional’, involving visions, transports, levitations. . . . This is putting the important thing into second place, pushing the central to the periphery. For Paul, a mystic is a person who knows the fullness of Christ, who lives by the inflowing of the Holy Spirit: “It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Galations, ii, 20 “They are the sons of God who are guided by His Spirit.” Romans, viii, 14 Paul is a contemplative who lives in the four dimensions of love. John is not a mystic because he had the visions of the Apocalypse but because he was ‘born of God’ because he revealed that God is Light, Love and Life. In silence which is active, the Inner Light begins to glow – a tiny spark. For the flame to be kindled and to grow, subtle argument and the clamour of our emotions must be stilled. It is by an attention full of love that we enable the Inner Light to blaze and illuminate our dwelling and to make of our whole being a source from which this Light may shine’ out. By this active silence the soul is prepared for passive silence. Then God brings the soul into silence. A spontaneous attention but not in its inferior and degrading form. The soul which is thus compelled and mystically possessed is liberated and not restricted: in this way the soul realises its deepest desire. It is an enlarging of the soul, a widening of the horizon. Psychologists tell us that attention is an active waiting animated by reason. Silence is an active waiting animated by faith and love. There comes an answer; and then it is that the soul is filled by the Presence. 14
God is there. But there is still silence. And the more God is there, the more there is Silence. Only those who try out this way of silence know how many shades of meaning this word can include, how much variety, how much mystery. At this point psychology can go no further. “At the top of the mountain the road stops.” John of the Cross When we experience this we are in the kingdom of the ineffable.
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5 OBSTACLES TO SILENCE No sooner has our gaze turned inwards towards the deepest Centre than there begins the tumult of mental images. A horde of instinctive desires rushes into the field of our consciousness. The inward gaze vanishes as it were into thin air; the soul seems somehow to be battered into dust. The temple of Silence has become a fairground. The first obstacle to contemplative Silence is distraction This simple word conceals very complicated states of mind, a whole series of phenomena. There is, for instance, the return of the dominating preoccupation of the moment – intellectual, professional or emotional. This is a question of the conscious material which occupies the mind during the day coming up without difficulty to the surface. It is difficult to shut the door on these images with which we have just and for so long been concerned. The emptiness of our time of preparation is not a sufficient barrier. The soul has no watertight compartments. The distracted person as the etymology of the word indicates is one who is pulled in this direction and that. His mind is, so to speak, fragmented into trivialities. It is understandable that absorbing activities into which we are putting perhaps too much of our heart should return to the attack in the great peace of our silence. But why at this precious moment, more than at any other, should we be wholly possessed by trivialities? The insignificance of the objects which seize hold of our imagination, capture it and take it prisoner, bewilders the religious soul, and brings humiliation and discouragement. It is nevertheless a very common, almost inevitable experience. We must be aware of this in order not to fall 16
into a mood of sterile self-accusation. We must also give up the concept of the sovereignty of the will, which is pure myth. Humility is more powerful than the will. Another trial, often more grievous, is the experience of the subconscious. The soul which is satisfied with simple meditation, with a purely speculative contemplation (for example, enjoying the taste of ideas, savouring a conceptual vision) or the soul taking a pleasant sip at spiritual experience, these souls scarcely run any risk of coming up against the subconscious. But the one who does not stop on the way, but goes beyond meditation, ideas and the enjoyment they give, to silence itself; the one who seeks the deepest Centre, the very heart of being; such a one cannot avoid meeting in his path the subconscious and its phantoms. At the moment of silence he comes face to face with all his repressions. Repression, according to Freud, is not necessarily pathological – it is the essential condition for sublimation. It is the failure to repress that produces morbidity. It is perhaps this experience that John of the Cross was trying to describe in passages where he speaks of the ‘passive night of the senses’, and he had no knowledge of clinical psychology. His experience as a contemplative made him suspect the existence of phenomena still unknown and unexplored. The contemplative has a knowledge of himself and of man which goes very deep and which has not always been painlessly achieved. There may be pathological obstacles to silence such as the inability to concentrate one’s loving attention. The contemplative is never outside the human condition and its misery. The person who after a period of depression finds his thoughts wandering in all directions must for the duration of his illness give up the idea of prolonged silence. Patience in his trial, and deprivation, will take the place of silence for him. He will be cut off from joy, but not from the mystic life.
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6 THE ART OF MAKING USE OF OBSTACLES There are numerous obstacles which are impossible to catalogue; such is their proliferation according to individual temperament, character, and personality. Much more important without any doubt is the art of making use of obstacles, as obstacles. It is a valuable help if we can receive instruction on this point, if we can find a guide in the person of a friend or the example of a mystic. There is no obstacle which, once recognised and understood, cannot become the starting point for a new leap forward, even that pathological condition which precludes the exercise of silence. That is the message of the Crucified One – through the Cross to the Light. If we can pass beyond the conscious, there remain many opportunities to turn our eyes, however briefly, towards the Inward Light. It is for souls in affliction that self-offering assumes a concrete meaning, for sacrifice is not a rite but an attitude of the whole being, the consecration of one’s whole life. If we wish to make progress in the way of Silence we must be convinced that the will cannot of itself impose calm and serenity. The role of the will is a very modest one – like that of the shepherd who chooses where his sheep shall graze; or of the dog who gathers in the flock and watches over it. Nothing more, but nevertheless of great importance. Neither the shepherd nor the dog can prevent one of the sheep from straying. They do not worry about it – their task is to bring back the wanderer to the pasture. A 18
silence entirely occupied in a tireless re-assembling of the flock is an excellent exercise. The Holy Spirit works secretly in the depths. The soul is unaware of what is happening and cannot rejoice in the process. But let it persevere; one day it will find itself, without knowing how, in a wide space within, free and bathed in light. The painful times of silence in which dog and shepherd accomplished their hard task have borne their fruit. In the desire to escape from all distraction there lurks a dangerous pride: the dream that one can, like some celestial being, be above the common condition. This is not the spirit of Nazareth, taught by the carpenter’s son. Even if the contemplative desired it, he would be powerless to stop the wanderings of his imagination. Much more than this he must, against his will, plumb the depths of his unconscious, suffer what he sees in its treacherous shadows, and feel the bite of the demons that are perhaps only our complexes. This is the experience of the thorn of which the apostle Paul speaks: ‘If I should choose to boast, it would not be the boast of a fool, for I should be speaking the truth. But I refrain, because I should not like anyone to form an estimate of me which goes beyond the evidence of his own eyes and ears. And so, to keep me from being unduly elated by the magnificence of such revelations’ (Paul had just been speaking of being transported into the third heaven), “I was given a sharp pain in my body which came as Satan’s messenger to bruise me; this was to save me from being unduly elated. Three times I begged the Lord to rid me of it, but his answer was “My grace is all you need; power comes to, its full strength in weakness.” I shall therefore prefer to find my joy and pride in the very things that are my weakness; and then the power of Christ will come and rest upon me.” Corinthians, xii, 6-10.
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Humility and the spirit of poverty are the safest handrails to hold on to along this path. We must accept ourselves as we are, seize the passing moment with its glory or its wretchedness, live with what we are and with what we have, in loving self-giving. There is, however, one obstacle which can be a real hindrance because it resists the Light, covering it over with a thick layer of darkness. This opaque screen is the screen of egotism, of the puffing-up of self, of possessiveness. There is no silence where there is no void. There is no illumination where there is no transparency.
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7 THE STAGES OF SILENCE The first stage on the road which leads to the radiant Silence of the mountain tops is active silence, sought for in the nakedness of faith. From that moment a soul begins this search, it has already had some form of religious experience, however obscure. It has come within the magnetic field of the divine Centre. Pascal, following Augustine in this, found the words which best express this starting point: “You would not be seeking me if you had not already found me.” The soul has found its Centre, and it is to reach this Centre that it journeys on courageously despite the burdens and the periods of dryness. Each stage corresponds to a progress in love. Love unites. Silence and love go hand in hand. The quality of the one indicates the quality of the other. Later come the stages of silence which are the gifts of God’s Grace and the manifestations of His Nature. The first of these is the grace of inward retirement. Mystics compare the faculties of the soul to the sheep which the whistle of the divine shepherd calls back to the fold. The sheep return of their own accord at the faintest signal. They say also that the soul is like the bee which flies swiftly back to the hive; or like the tortoise which with an instinctive movement withdraws and hides in itself. The power of the soul, says another, is like the needle which swings towards the magnet. Such, according to the mystics, is the grace of inward retirement. 21
The second manifestation of God is the grace of inward quiet, of deep peace, of repose in the Light within. This quiet is distinguished from retirement by a more deeply felt inward pervasion. The will feels itself to be held captive. A spring of water flows with the utmost – tranquility and gentleness from the most secret depths. It is not a question here of consolation bestowed upon ourselves by the exercise of our faculties, but of joy truly felt as a favour at the moment we receive it. In this inward quiet the soul must not be concerned with thinking much, but with loving much. The third manifestation of God is the grace of union. All these divine visitations are in fact unions, the experience of another Presence, an ever-deepening intimacy. However, spiritual authors recognise a variety of inward states, differing in their intensity, their quality, their effects. Hence all these different manifestations of God. Why should we add to inward retirement and quiet the grace of union? Because by this grace the soul is more completely possessed. Its understanding receives particular enlightenment. Above all, it is dominated more than ever before by a feeling of certainty. “Then God established Himself in the deepest centre of that soul in such a way”, writes Theresa of Avila, “that in returning to itself it is impossible to doubt that it has been in God and God in it.” This is truly a meeting with the living God, the death of the old Adam, the birth of the new man-forms of words which now express a solid reality. The contemplative burns with the intense desire to work for the Kingdom of Love, an active purposeful desire which makes him ready for any sacrifice. Finally, there is one last stage, a union even more consummate and which fulfils the soul’s deepest longing for unity. This is the grace of fusion. Many mystics call it spiritual marriage, recalling The Song of Songs which is its most perfect poetic expression. This is not just a fleeting grace but a permanent union. In the most sensitive part of the soul, at its deepest centre, sheltered from all surface eddies, God and the soul are present to each other. Paul’s words;
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“He who links himself with Christ is one with him spiritually” Corinthians, vi, 17. are the best and simplest expression of a religious life which has attained this degree of fullness. John, in the fourth gospel, echoing the last talks and conversations of Jesus with his disciples, describes magnificently this final stage: “Then you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” John, xiv, 20. And again, “Anyone who loves me will heed what I say; then my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” John, xiv, 23. We can know this mystery of unity theoretically, from the outside. Or we can live it. This is the living experience for which silence prepares us and towards which silence leads us, before it gives it to us ever more bounteously. From silence to silence, the “small voices of silence” as Gandhi called it. There comes a day when our silence proclaims more loudly than any words that God is Light, Love and Life.
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8 THE SILENCE OF JESUS In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gives a series of warnings about the many ways in which the believer can slip into hypocrisy. All false imitations of the inner life have this in common that they are an outward manifestation of self-interest. We wish to present a favourable image of ourselves to the eyes of men. We are not concerned with God alone. It is in this context that Jesus gives us his warning against hypocrisy in prayer: “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; they love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogue and at street corners, for everyone to see them. I tell you this, they have their reward already.” Matthew, vi, 5. Here is now the positive advice: “But when you pray, go into a room by yourself, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is there in the secret place, and your Father who sees what is secret will reward you.” Matthew, vi, 6. Prayer is a mystery, a secret between God and the soul, a movement inwards, a retreat, a self-forgetting. Nothing counts but the ineffable Presence.
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After the precept, here is the example. Apart from the seventeenth chapter of John, the Gospels never describe the prayer of Jesus in any detail. There are restrained references here and there in the course of the narrative, as inconspicuous as possible. Only the patient and very attentive reader is allowed to see Jesus at prayer. Let us try to come upon him at some of his times of prayer. Jesus is about to depart secretly from Capernaum where he had been teaching in the Synagogue. In the evening after sunset, he had healed the sick and liberated those possessed of devils: “Very early next morning he got up and went out. He went away to a lonely spot and remained there in prayer" Mark, i, 35 Immediately after the first miracle of the loaves and fishes; “Jesus made the disciples embark and go on ahead to the other side, while he sent the people away; after doing that, he went up to the hillside to pray alone. It grew late and he was there by himself.” Mathew, xi, 23 and Mark, vi, 45-8 He stayed there until the fourth watch of the night, that is about three o'clock in the morning. He then came walking on the waters to meet his disciple who were in difficulties because the wind was against them. Luke summarises the last days of Jesus before the drama of the Passion in this way: “His days were given to teaching in the temple, and then he would spend the night on the hill called Olivet. And in the early morning the people flocked to listen to him in the temple." Luke, xxi, 37, 38 It could be said that the external actions of Jesus are completely enfolded in the inward silence. His life is a magnificent apologia for silence: for three years (or two according to some) he worked as a prophet and a healer, labouring to establish the Kingdom of
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God in the world of man and matter. For the thirty preceding years he kept silence. How we should love to see into the silent soul of Jesus, to penetrate the mystery of his solitary communion with God! We can only guess at them by pondering on the prayers he put into words for our use – the Lords Prayer and the Prayer For Unity. The Lords Prayer was taught by Jesus to his disciples after a silence as Luke suggests in chapter eleven. These are essentially silent words coming from the silence and leading to silence. All commentaries are poor, wretched, inadequate. All the words of Jesus, emanating from a silence of rare depth and fullness, must be heard in the silence of the soul. Then they reveal he Silence of God.
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9 SILENCE AND PACIFISM For two thousand years the Good News has not ceased to ring in men’s ears. For two thousand years violence has increased by leaps and bounds. Now we have reached the atomic age. What show have we put on to save humanity from apocalyptic horrors? Peaceful coexistence? This so-called peaceful coexistence is nothing but the simple resolve to tolerate the existence of a different system. The misunderstandings still persist. Both sides accept the necessity of making minor concessions but each remains master in his own domain. Might is more right than ever it was. Peaceful coexistence is merely a refusal to enter into dialogue. Just as there is a servile religion founded on the fear of punishment, so there is a servile peace founded on a balance of terror. Man is today clever enough to land on the moon, but he is still too infantile to recognise the existence of the other person as another person. Man? A creature of overdeveloped intellect who remains emotionally retarded. We must be realistic enough to admit this. The other only exists as an other if I can listen to him when he expresses his otherness. To hear him we must know how to keep silent. Man is incapable of listening in to man because he is less and less capable of listening in to God. Freedom of speech is a sacred right which too many regimes have denied. But why is it so unfruitful in those countries where it can still be exercised? Because everybody talks and nobody listens. Each individual lives, as in a cell, in the narrow world of the words he utters. Every individual, and every group. Words are no longer bridges linking the one to the other. Speech 27
which is not heard only intensifies isolation and increases the babble of tongues. The clever ones profit by this. Less and less a helpful servant and more and more an instrument of propaganda, speech has become the vehicle for the uneasy consciences of men. Words must be purified in a redemptive silence if they are to bear the message of peace. The right to speak is a call to the duty of listening. Speech has no meaning unless there are attentive minds and silent hearts. Silence is the welcoming acceptance of the other. The word, born of silence, must be received in silence. How many pacifists are there who proclaim aloud their convictions? And amongst these how many are silent souls able to listen to God and to their human brothers? Pacifism is just one more illusion if it is not, in its silence, a total opening of the self, a respectful attention to the other, with understanding and love. Gandhi had learnt to listen to ‘his small silent voice’. Martin Luther King knew the secret of ‘The Strength to Love’. Let Gandhi have the last word in the farm of three quotations which are worth quite as much as any lengthy exposition: “Prayer is the very essence of religion; it must therefore be the marrow of man’s life, for no man can live without religion.” “Prayer is not an asking. It is an aspiration of the soul. It is a daily confession of our weakness.” “It is better to put one’s heart into one’s prayer without finding the right words, than to find the right words without putting one’s heart into them.” Young India. 25.11.26, 23.9.26, 23.1.30.
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