- françaisSri Sri Sri Satchidananda is a Muni: a sage withdrawn in silence, since more forty years.
This teaching, Ramana Maharishi exposed it in "Be as you are":
"How was born the speech? First, there is an abstract knowledge; from there rises the ego, so on its turn, give birth to the thought, and this one to the spoken word.
And it makes that the word is the great-grandson of the original source (cf Samkhya). If the word can produce an effect, judge by yourself how much the silent teaching must be more efficient.”
Someone who is achieved sends waves of spiritual influence which attract many beings toward him, even though he is seated in an underground cave in complete silence... There is no need for him to mingle with the crowd. If necessary he can even use the other as an instrument.
The Guide is one who spills the silence which carries the light of knowledge of the Self. Dakshinamurti observed the silence when his disciples approached him. It is the highest shape of initiation. It includes all other initiations. In the other one there is necessarily a topic, a look, a contact or a teaching relation.
In all domains it purifies the person and establishes him in the reality. To destroy the feeling to be the disciple, here is the master’s role... If somebody is looking for the individuality, he won’t find it nowhere. Such is the Master...
Such was Dakshinamurti... He kept the silence and the disciples saw their doubts disappear, that means that they had lost the sense of their individuality. It is the knowledge, and not the whole word which is customarily added...
The silence doesn’t stop speaking. It is a continual current which is only interrupted by the speech. The words that I pronounce make obstacle to the mute language. For example, the electric current in a thread. If there is a resistance on its way, it shines in the case of a lamp, or run in the case of a fan. In the thread it stays at the electric energy state. In the same way, while the words are resistances, with the silence that is the flux of the language.
What you are not able to know, even after many years of speeches, can be instantaneously feared in the silence or in front of the silence. Dakshinamurtis and his four disciples are a good example of this. The silence is the highest and the most efficient of languages...
The sage already defeated the mind and stayed in the peace. In his neighbourhood the latent mind tendencies (vasana) stop being active, the mind lulls and absorbs himself in Samadhi.
With the master’s presence the disciple acquires the real knowledge and the correct experience.
Ramana Maharshi - Excerpts of "Be as you are", J. Maisonneuve, 1992