The voice of the silent mind speaks with parts other than the ones that form words and make associations. Making associations, as it happens, is a relentless process that can barely be slowed down, let alone stopped. Because it's a necessary function for the ordinary intellect, it acquires a force of its own that uses its main asset — words — to prosecute every ounce of its force within Being.
The fact that its energy is, paradoxically, quite weak overall and that it lacks any solid direction is overcome by sheer force of numbers —hence the comparison of it to “sand” in the analogy of pre-sand Egypt. It's dry and ultimately lifeless matter that swamps the landscape with billions of “particles” that aggregate and cover up that which has life and is real. We all live in the midst of this sand; we play in the sandbox like children. We build little castles out of it by adding a little moisture; and yet the moisture quickly evaporates and the castles collapse. The sand would serve us much better if it was used to help improve the drainage in the soil of Being; that is, if its function relative to moisture was the opposite to the one it currently has for us.
In this analogy perhaps we understand that ordinary life, as we experience it, is water that should pass through Being to enrich it. Impressions are part of the chemical experiment this world is made of; the experiments of sunlight, of atmosphere, of evaporation, of life and death, decay and growth. All of these things added together are part of a much greater Being. It works the same way inside us: because we're like solar systems with planets in us, Being itself has sunlight that is received from a higher level, an atmosphere it creates, evaporation and precipitation that take place in it—life and death, decay and growth. Even parts of our inner being rely on the death and digestion of themselves to help create the soil for new parts to grow. There are seeds in us; there are plants. There are trees and flowers, fish and animals. We don’t understand this at all because we see everything I've just described as things that take place “outside” of us; and for as long as we allow the ego to create this noisy separation between us and the nature of Being, we'll never see it
The voice of the silent mind lives in eternity. It doesn't base its perception or its life within time, but rather within Being. When Gurdjieff explained that the universe was created in order to prevent the erosion of God’s place of existence by time, when he described the “universe” what he in fact meant was Being.
Being exists in order to prevent the erosion of our place of existence by time. The inhabitation of Being, the cultivation of the silent mind, always takes place in a moment separated from the passage of time.
Time is essentially nothing more than a measure of movement, the juxtaposition of objects relative to one another from moment to moment. The voice of the silent mind brings stillness to that action; and when the measurement of movement ends, within the place that it ends, the measurement of time dilates. This can cause time to pass, from the perspective of subjective experience, at an extraordinarily slow rate. The speed with which time passes is directly related to the noisy mob with the pots and pans. The more noise they make, the faster it appears to go by.
Folks believe they are going to learn something by marching with the mob. But all one learns to do by this activity is march with the mob. This is perfectly okay if you're interested in being a mobster, a gangster; and most everyone acts like a gangster when they're busy marching with the pots and pans. We even secretly think that this is a dashing enhancement of lifestyle; the art of being a gangster is celebrated in the ordinary world.
No wonder people vote for gangsters and elect them president; the mystery is solved.
May we try not to beat so loud on our pots and pans today—
warmly,
Lee
Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.
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