Swami Dhyan Giten: Light on
the Path
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Please could you kindly clarify ‘silence’ i.e is that the same as the Sound of Silence (what I term the subtle sound called silence, or sometimes called the Nada Sound)? I practice listening to the Sound of Silence, but although I’ve known this since childhood I’ve only in recent years realised the deep significance of this as a spiritual practice for meditation and meditative living during normal daily active life. Is this what you are also referring too? My Kind regards and deep respect,
George
Dear George,
Thank you for your question. I laughed when I read your question as several of my students are musicians, and the title of my first book in Swedish is Song of Meditation: On Meditation, Relationships and Spiritual Creativity. Music and Meditation are really two aspects of the same phenomenon. Music and meditation are two sides of the same coin. Meditation is the roots and music is the flower.
Indian yogis say that the universe consists of sound, while the scientists say that the universe consists of electricity. They are both right as they look at the universe from two different standpoints. The Buddhist meditation method the Sound of Silence consists of learning to listen to universal sound that yogis talk about as the base of the universe.
The Sound of Silence is still a meditation method, and is not the same as what I refer to as silence. Sound of Silence is a meditation method, where you use the inner sound as the object for meditation. The overall object of meditation is learning to understand the mind, and to develop our inner being, the meditative quality within, the inner silence and emptiness, the capacity to surrender to life.
In our spiritual growth and in meditation, we travel through 4 levels of consciousness: 1. The conscious level 2. The subconscious 3. The unconscious and 4. The superconscious. The conscious level concists of what we identify as ourselves and of our desires, the second level the subconscious is everything that we deny about ourselves and has hidden in the basement of our consciousness, the third level the unconscious consists of our real needs that refers to the body and the fourth level the superconscious is the dimension of being. It is the level of samadhi, of inner silence and emptiness, where we become one with Existence.
In my work with students, I combine therapy with meditation to allow the students to step by step create the love, awareness and understanding to go through these four levels of consciousness.
The spiritual growth is also dependent on the commitment of the student. On the conscious level, the student finds the trust to his spiritual growth. On the subconscious level, he finds the love to go deeper in himself. On the unconscious level, he discovers the surrender to life. And on the superconscious level, he becomes one with life.
In India, there are two concepts: dhyana and samadhi. Dhyana means meditation, which means to use a meditation method to learn to understand and witness the mind, and to develop the inner being. Samadhi means the pure being, the inner silence and emptiness, where we disappear into silence and move from the individual to the universal. In samadhi, meditation is no longer necessary as we have become meditation.
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