THE SILENCE

 
When the mind finally gives up its relentless clamor, then the voice of Meher Baba's Silence will ring clear, pealing the Avataric Hour of Glorification. That voice rings now, but the mind is full of noise deafening the heart. The Hour is not yet at hand.

Perhaps our minds are like one huge clock that was wound up long ago and is simply running out its time. But that clock does not tick on forever because now it is set to ring. At Baba's samadhi one feels that the clock is set to ring, and when it rings we shall all awake to meet a new day.

In that moment when I approached Baba and He embraced me and held my face so close to His, at that moment I could actually hear the sound of Baba's breathing, so mighty was the silence. All I could hear was the long, extended rhythm of Baba's breathing. And this sound amplified for me my own awareness of His fathomless Silence.

Now that Silence is no more. It is gone, that Silence, from our midst. The illusory silence has given way to the Real Silence.

Who can understand that Silence? Surely only the genuine mystics can ever begin to fathom the Reality of that Silence. Listen to the words of Kahlil Gibran*:

"I go, but if I go with a truth not yet voiced, that very truth will again seek me and gather me, though my elements be scattered throughout the silences of eternity, and again shall I come before you that I may speak with a voice born anew out of the heart of those boundless silences.

"O Mist, my sister, my sister Mist,
I am one with you now.
No longer am I a self.
The walls have fallen,
And the chains have broken;
I rise to you a mist,
And together we shall float upon the sea until life's second day,
When dawn shall lay you, dewdrops in a garden,
And me a babe upon the breast of a woman."