What is our pursuit for anyway? For infinite happiness, peace & love…     We can have infinite happiness At the speed of Silence…

Many people from all walks of life have written fantastic literature on the subject of Silence and Meditation on Silence–and for good reason. Silence holds the key to opening the doors to a wholesome Life, ultimate Liberation and attainment of Happiness. It helps uplift our visions, our concepts, our way of thinking, feeling and how we act in our world. Silence leads to harmoniously uniting all of us–all the life forms–in the one common thread of Infinite and Peaceful Love. It shows us our inherent nature of Love and in so doing, gets rid of fear and fear-based disease.

SGAF first and foremost promotes silence and offers tools that help people have their first hand experience of Inner Silence and its vast therapeutic benefits: of the balance, the integrity and the integration of our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual being. To lead us out of pain and fear and into attainment of joy.

Silence therapy, as the name implies, is therapy via Silence. A therapy for what though?

• Silence offers therapy from the ignorance of essence and the root of our being and life itself. Silence is the tool, which helps us know and experience fully who we are, what is life and what is our purpose in life. The lack of such complete knowledge and experience causes us to think and live only partially at a body and mind level. We ignore our roots–our soul, the 'being' aspect of 'human-being', the Universal Energy, which is Life and which enlivens us. So, ignorance causes us to live in partial–truth, not whole truth.
  
  When we live in partial knowledge, it follows that our actions in life are based upon incomplete and imperfect knowledge. And, it need not be stated that actions based on incomplete knowledge are harmful and dangerous–and worst of all, our actions cannot be taken back after complete knowledge is gained.
  
  Meanwhile, we continue to starve the roots of our being, our soul. And when we starve our soul, we starve our whole selves.
  
  Think about it: Do we water the flowers and fruits of a tree? Or do we water and nourish the roots of a tree? What happens when we ignore the roots of the plant? Don't the fruits and flowers wither away and, in due time, the plant is completely dead. Is that what we want to do with our life and our world as well? Do we even know the root essence of our being, much less nurture it? Are we not starving our selves of complete knowledge, happiness, peace and love? And isn't that what we are striving to attain in the first place? And all that can be found via Silence–that which is free and already within us?

• Silence offers a therapy from a soul that is at unrest, a soul that is not at peace, and not feeling liberated. And ultimately, silence offers a therapy for a world that is not at peace. Silence offers the way to complete liberation for body, mind and the soul. Complete liberation comes from the knowledge of our whole self. Such knowledge of the whole self leads to the direct perception and experience of the one all-pervading one life force, energy, which dwells as the individual self in all beings.
  
  Such an experience transforms and expands our consciousness forever, silences all doubt, is not antagonistic to reason and common sense, and is conducive to the welfare of all beings. Because a free soul demonstrates, in vision, thought, word, deed and all action, the reality of the oneness with all life forms.
  
  A soul comes to experience peace and joy while embodied. And it is not simply a prayer after the passing away of the body. Isn't that what we all pray for when our loved one passes away. Don't we pray, "May the soul rest in peace?" Why 'rest in peace' only after we have passed away? Why not while we have the body? Wouldn't that be the ultimate experience of peace and joy and liberation while we are embodied? Why miss out on that peace and that joy of liberation, so perfect and so complete?

• Silence offers a therapy from not-attainment of complete happiness despite our rigorous and endless pursuit of it. Short-lived happiness leaves us wanting more, searching more and again at unrest. Happiness that is dependent of someone or something leaves us feeling dependent not independent, and leads to setting controls, rules and regulations so that that someone or something does not leave us. Such a pursuit of desire and happiness without fulfillment, which we attempt to gain via our controlling efforts, and which is based in partial knowledge of our being- leads to diseases in the physical and mental bodies.
  
  Primarily, it depletes the oxygen levels in our body and mind and causes energy burnout. This causes the mind to overheat, which leads to things such as anger, hatred, etc and hence we are unable to think or act calmly, coolly or rationally. From such state of our being, we not only hurt our body, but the actions that come from us also lead to hurting the world at large.

Swami Vivekananda once said, "If it is happiness to enjoy the consciousness of this one body, it must be greater happiness to enjoy the consciousness of two bodies- the measure of happiness increasing with the consciousness of an increasing number of bodies. The aim, the ultimate of happiness being reached when it would become a universal consciousness."

Given the unstable condition of our world today- a world that we have built -both our inner and our outer world, the need for Silence and its therapeutic effects is increasing daily. Silence not only leads to identifying the root cause of the instability, but also the cure for it. To summarize, the main benefits of Silence therapy are:

1. Silence therapy leads to the realization of the foundational essence of our LIFE: "Love Internal Finally Enlightened". This experience leads to us being in inner absolute peace and joy and contentment. This inner joy and peace is what we express out into the relative universe. And we come to see how "doing" transforms into "being". We then see that a mere "doing" is limited to the body and mind, i.e. partial knowledge of ourselves. We see also that the "being" comes from the synthesis of our whole selves: body-mind-soul. Then, we are not just "doing" good, but "goodness" effortlessly and spontaneously springs forth from our "being" of love and complete knowledge. Just as a rose naturally emits beautiful fragrance into the field of its presence- it is not ''doing', it is simply 'being' what it is. So too, humans can emit divinity from their being.
   
2. Next, we come to see that this essence is not just the foundation of our being, but the foundation of all life- that this life energy runs through all the life forms including: plant life, animal life, human life, earth and environment's life, etc. And this realization leads to uniting us all with one energy, one love and hence mutual respect for each other. Because, our inherent unity with all is not just 'understood' by the mind, but 'experienced' in every particle of our being.
   
   In this enlightened way of our being, we can come to live as one with all- and experience unity in diversity, absolute love in the relative universe, on one earth, under one sky in one universe in peace and in harmony. To paraphrase Swami Sharnanand: Take the example of the Human body. While all parts of the body have a different form, different name and different function, the body works as one entity, in love and respect. While walking, if one stumbles and falls and the knee gets hurt, the mouth shouts for help, the hand rushes to rescue by grabbing a band-aid, while the eyes shed tears and the lips blow warm air on the wound. The knee cannot shout for help, for it has no such capability. The eyes cannot put on the band-aid, for that is not its function. The hand cannot shed tears, as that is the function of the eye. Each gives to its full capacity. Why? Why is it that when it is the knee that is hurt, that all the other parts come to spontaneously assist? Because while all parts are visibly separate and diverse, they are united by the invisible essence of being one with all parts and so each part responds automatically out of that unity and love. In the same way, while all humans have various forms, names and functions, we are in fact united at the core by the essence of all life- Universal Love, Universal Consciousness. United, we stand.
   
   The problems in our world stem from our incorrect thinking that we are separate or divided. We think and feel that whatever ability or capacity we have is for us only, not for the rest of the world. Take the case of the knee being hurt. The hand could have, out of separate consciousness, stayed undisturbed by the problems of the knee–thinking that it was the knee's problem, but not the hand's. It would be said then that the hand was possessive of its ability, while neglecting its responsibility and not responding. And the hand would not have done the hand's rightful role and the whole body would have suffered. Divided, we fall.
   
3. When we all come to living as one 'Whole', we co-create a wholistic lifestyle for our self, the globe and the universe. Rooted in an enlightened way of being- a being of love–one founded upon universal consciousness and love–devoid of fear and separation, we can actually build a world of absolute love which emanates from us - where absolute love and happiness is not only possible, but possible for all and for all times.

Silence Therapy: What does one do in Silence Therapy to get to such a realization and unite with its abundant benefits?

In architectural design, the basic principle of building anything is to have a proper foundation. We all know how important it is to have a foundation. And that too a solid one. Because if the base- the foundation, is not solid, how will it hold the building together? So, in terms of a building, we pay careful attention to the foundation and use the best materials to ensure the sustainability of the building as a whole. And as we all know, once the building is built, the foundation- the roots remain deep and "unseen".

Now, let us look at the architecture of the human-"being". What is the foundation of the human-being? What is the essence of the human-being? Is the physical body the foundation of the human-being? Is the mind or thoughts the foundation of the human-being? Are both, the physical body and the mind, not ever-changing? Does the body not change? Does the mind not change and shift also? And so, can the ever-changing be a foundation? And that too a solid one? It seems unlikely. So, can we say that it is not likely that human life is founded upon the body and mind–but that the body and mind are parts of the human-being. Parts which are resting upon something else. Something unseen.

So, this leads our investigation deeper and seemingly into "subtler" realms. We say "subtle", because, the dense or seen are not likely its foundation. So, it leads us to asking what is the 'being' or the foundational aspect of the human-being? And, this takes us to the tool of Silence. For it is via Silence or Silence Meditation,–via paying close, careful and complete attention- that this question gets answered.

Since it is already observed that the body nor the mind are parts of the whole, but not the foundations of life, in Silence one basically comes to relax the body and still the activities of the mind i.e., thought flow. And when both these are relaxed and stilled, our energies become concentrated on going beyond these and we do not allow the body or the mind interfere with our investigation.

In this relaxing or stilling of the body and mind, one takes on a role of being a detached observer. That is to say that one observes the body and the mind as a detached observer–such that, one identifies that he is not the body or the thoughts, but that he has a body and a mind–or a bag of thoughts. This detached observation will help us identify the root foundation, 'being' of the human-being.

As a side note, let us mention this: When one starts to do such a detached observation, one quickly comes to see that the mind is composed of thoughts or call it a bag of thoughts. Now, in this bag, some are pleasing attractive thoughts while others are not so pleasing. The quantity and quality of thoughts varies from person to person. But basically, they are all thoughts. When we dissect thoughts, it is seen that all thoughts are composed of one or all of the three things namely, subjects, objects and circumstances. Each thought has one basic constant of "I" in it, which works to establish body-individual association. In general terms, each individual, out of pleasure principle, attaches themselves to the objects, subjects or circumstances of attraction & pleasure and repels from unpleasant ones. And we come to becoming dependent on those thoughts for our happiness. We basically spend our energy in this attraction and repulsion hoping to find lasting pleasures and hence happiness. So, the bottom line is, we are searching for happiness and joy and peace and love and that too of an eternal kind via these thoughts. Out of long and wrong habit, we think that thoughts are the roots of happiness.

But now, while being detached from thoughts and body, we are to observe. So when one is detached from the attractive and repulsive thoughts, and when one is detached from feelings of happiness or sorrow associated with these thoughts, one comes to being in the neutral zone. When one is detached from the body and mind, then one comes to being united with Silence very automatically and naturally. For those who are whole-heartedly engaged, they come to such an experience quickly. Others may take some time, but should not be disheartened because sincere practice is rewarded abundantly in the form of perfection.

However, please note that this coming to Silence is merely the first step in our investigation. Remember that we are coming into Silence to identify, understand and experience the core foundation of human-being. So, at this stage, one still has to maintain their role of being a detached observer of Silence and not indulge in the pleasures of it. If we attach ourselves to Silence, such attachment gives rise to a thought like: "I am silent" or "I am peaceful". This can make us think that we have identified the foundation of our 'being'–which is "silence" or "peace", but that is not quite the case. In actuality, this thought creates two obstacles in our investigation: one, it creates a thought–that which we are trying to go beyond in order to see our foundation; and two, such a thought gives rise to thoughts of being superior than others–i.e, one thinks "I have peace and others are at unrest." This gives strength to us identifying ourselves and attaching ourselves with the body and leads us away from our investigation of the root foundation.

However, it is important to note that because we are inherently seeking peace, joy or happiness, it is easy to attach oneself to these thoughts of peace and silence, as one can derive temporary happiness from such a thought. But, armed with this information, the smart investigator crosses this hurdle with ease and keeps moving forward.

So, when one is successful in keeping one's self detached from Silence and does not indulge in its pleasure, one comes to the next phase. This phase is one of feeling liberated. It is an awesome feeling of 'Liberation', an indescribable freedom. This liberation is not just liberation from Silence, but also from the pain or pleasure deriving thoughts and feelings. This is complete Liberation.

But this too is a hurdle. The hurdle is to keep detached from feeling that one is fully liberated. Because this attachment too gives rise to a thought, "I am liberated." This thought too, like "I am Peaceful or Silent", deters us from the object of our investigation. Thankfully, however, this is the final hurdle, which does not pose any challenge to a well-informed investigator who keeps himself detached from this feeling of liberation.

Finally, when one comes to being detached even from the most indescribable feeling of being liberated from the ever-changing body and thoughts of various kinds, one at last comes face to face with the never–changing foundation–the essence of the 'being'. And this "being" is best described as Unconditional Consciousness of Love, Bliss. Universal Consciousness. It is here where the 'observer-self' merges with the 'observed'–this case Love. And one realizes that he is one and the same as Love.

One finds one's 'Love-self' to be Changeless, Eternal and Infinite. As said earlier, this Love-self is not antagonistic to reason and common sense. This Changeless has been called Consciousness, Bliss and Love by many. And it is important also to mention to our wise investigators that while we realize and attain to our Love-self, the other aspects of our self, Peace-Silence and Liberation also remain intact as they are now in a sphere of complete knowledge of the whole self. Many have named this Consciousness, "effortless awareness", "thought-free awareness", "objectless awareness", "bliss", "being" and even "expanded awareness".

But, while infinite may be the names of the essence, our objective was to come to see and experience the foundation of the human-being - the core essence of our 'being'. Having experienced that first hand - the infinite, changeless, love, happy, joy core of our selves within our selves, we are now equipped with complete wisdom to begin building our humane selves, our humane family, humane society and our humane world.

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