Silence Is The Beginning

In this Satsang, Shai Tubali shares his direct experience and constant state of deep ecstatic silence. He explores the question: "what is silence" in the spiritual liberation context. He describes how all of those who have a taste of true silence always wish to repeat the experience and fail to understand that silence is who we truly are. This Satsang is meant to connect us to this deep silence as our self-identity rather than an experience we constantly would like to repeat.

Transcript

So this kind of meeting which traditionally is called Satsang has nothing to do with any intellectual learning.

The teaching is not really a teaching.

There is nothing new to instill in our minds which are anyway already fully packed.

In Satsang I could.

.

.

Ask you to close your eyes or keep your eyes open,

To listen carefully to what I say or not listen at all,

And to a certain degree it will be just the same.

Because every word that will be said tonight is silence,

And silence is the message and the transmission and what we share and what meets through our eyes each other.

But what is silence?

Is it something that we feel right now,

Feeling the room?

You see we can have many types of silencing experiences.

We can go to nature and spend some time there and there we will feel a lot of silence.

There will be a silence done in Gonas and there we will feel sweet relaxation.

Then of course we will go to a noisy city,

To the heart of the city and then no silence.

Our nervous system is overstretched and we feel that we lose the silence.

So silence can be an experience,

It can be a long experience if we are lucky.

We can go to a retreat,

Be filled with silence,

With peace,

Then come out to what we call the world and for some time it might go on in us.

But then after a few days we will feel again this diminishing peace.

And again we are with our thoughts,

Emotions,

Feelings,

Reactions.

Then we long again to feel silence.

Now satsang has nothing to do with the experience of silence.

The experience of silence if there is one,

Is just meant to serve us as a reminder,

As an echo,

As a reflection.

But in itself it is meaningless and useless because it cannot last.

What if I were the most powerful teacher in the world?

I couldn't possibly transmit such a degree of silence that would last in you forever.

So there is silence that is a part of our experiences.

Sometimes our life is noisy,

Sometimes our life is silent or more relaxed,

More peaceful.

But really what satsang is meant to tell us about silence is so radical and so extraordinary.

But if we understood this,

This would change our entire perception,

The way we locate ourselves,

The way we look at everything,

The place from which we look.

Now what we are talking about this evening is nothing less than one of the most important shifts on the spiritual journey.

When this takes place,

Our journey becomes something completely different.

And it is the understanding,

The real profound understanding that silence is not an object.

It is not something that we feel,

Something that we experience,

You are not to be filled with silence.

All there is silence is your main core,

The main core that listens at this very moment.

And silence speaks when silence invites your silence or the silence that you are.

In the beginning we don t fully understand how radical,

How profound this is and what happens to us is that we at least get the ripples,

The distant ripples of this silence,

Then we say,

Oh,

I entered for sometimes such a deep peace inside me.

I want to come back,

I want to return because this was special.

But the only reason we respond in such a way to the experience of silence,

That it makes us feel at home,

That it makes us feel so healthy,

That everything makes sense in silence,

Everything comes together,

Is because it is us,

We recognize ourselves.

Then only mistakenly we start to try to repeat the experience,

To hunt this type of experiences.

Where is my silence?

We go to a seminar,

To a retreat,

To a satsang,

To India all the way.

And not that I have anything against India,

On the contrary,

I love it,

But even India is not the carrier of silence.

What all these things,

All the gurus,

All the holy places,

The temples,

They are only reflections that appear within our mind to remind us that that which is searching in us,

That which is longing in us,

Is the silence.

And this is a major breakthrough,

Surely we can understand.

There is the outer or frontal layer,

Part of our watching,

Listening,

But just behind our eyes,

Just a little deeper.

There is silence,

Watching,

Listening,

Observing.

So this is what we do in satsang,

We just fall into ourselves,

Which is.

.

.

Just try to even embrace for a moment this identity.

I am silence.

And then you begin to realize from this,

Even starting with playing with this identity,

That it is silence that is experiencing everything,

Including the personality,

Including the silence,

The external silence of satsang,

But also thoughts,

Emotions,

Cities or forests.

But why do we lose this so easily,

This connection,

This far truer self?

It is because all day long we are busy reacting.

Everything that appears before our eyes,

We just react to it,

React so quickly.

There is no separation between the moment of listening,

The watching,

And the reaction.

Nowadays this reaches already a very extreme reflection in the form of social media.

Our likes and dislikes,

They have become the center.

What defines the most our self,

Our authenticity,

What we like,

What we dislike,

What we accept,

Reject.

So this part becomes suppressed behind this constant reaction.

And we do not know what it feels like and what an amazing thing it is to watch without reaction.

What an amazing thing to be a quiet,

This quiet observer of life that is the core of our mind.

The reaction is just the periphery,

It is the circumference,

The outer layer,

The outermost layer of the mind is this part.

It is called a tremendous immovable watching that is just covered up.

And that is why we don't get to feel ourselves,

To be ourselves.

And see,

This is why we depend on meditation,

Good meditation,

Bad meditation.

You know,

Like a bad hair day,

There is a good meditation day,

There is a bad meditation day,

There is when we are distracted,

When it succeeds.

But really what is experiencing the bad meditation and the good meditation,

The destruction and the days of concentration is silence you.

Try even for one day to just watch the world,

You will miss nothing I can assure you.

It is just like fasting,

Fast from reaction,

Watch things.

You watch something.

And even if thought reacts automatically,

Then watch thought reacting automatically.

And don't react to thought,

React to reacting thought,

This is how everything becomes completely messy.

You see,

Because thoughts,

Emotions,

Everything,

Its role is to react automatically.

But at the center of us,

There is a choice whether to quickly react or to listen.

And only silence listens.

Because in listening there can be absolutely no prejudice,

Absolutely no reaction,

No categorization.

Try that,

There is a challenge,

Don't react,

Watch it silently,

Watch thoughts reacting to the challenge out of this silence.

Then you are realizing that you are beginning to watch the world from a different place.

You are watching the world from the world of silence.

You are looking at everything not from here,

From behind your eyes.

Where there is absolute total listening.

You see,

We give too much importance to the ups and downs of our journey to trying to improve the state of the mind.

While peace is the way we meet everything,

The way we watch everything.

Silence is the beginning of observation.

Silence is the beginning of observation.

Silence is the beginning of observation.

Sometimes it looks quite,

Feels quite astonishing.

Because to a certain degree you are just like this camera.

This camera is now reflecting me.

And with so much peace,

Right?

I am never judged by this camera as far as I know of course.

It is just holding my image as it is as a quiet observer.

That its role is first of all to see,

To be aware.

And if we don't know this thing of sometimes walking on the street and really just looking without drawing conclusions,

Without giving so much attention to the me that is watching and its relationships to everything.

Hey look at this,

This is nice,

Hey look at this,

This is terrible,

Hey look at this,

I want that,

Hey look at this,

I don't want that.

Because you see,

We call it then the noise of the city,

But we are the noise of the city.

It is so wise.

I just read in what for me is the greatest yogic scripture in the history,

Yoga Vasistha.

It says to the wise one,

Cities are like forests.

It states that because it deals with the question whether we should move to a cave or some remote ashram or we can be just as we are.

And then it says if you have desire and attachment,

Even when you are in the forest,

It is like being in the city.

But if you are without it,

Even in a city you are like in a forest.

So silence is not in what we are looking.

It is what we are that feels what we look with ourselves,

With our fragrance.

And there is so much of our real self everywhere.

Because the silence that we are recognizes so easily the silence everywhere.

So then you will never find yourself longing for silence or for peace.

As soon as you will understand this revolutionary yet so simple point that it is in the way you look.

It is in the way you listen even to your own turbulent mind.

When you are silent and there is a turbulent mind,

It is such a joy and curiosity to watch the mind at work.

It is so cute with all its distortion and contradiction and hysteria.

Then the body participates.

Then now let's create anxiety,

A full orchestra of emotions and feelings.

But you are not that.

So again the key to re-entering that,

To re-contacting you is on a daily basis is even if you give only one hour for that and then you go back and embrace the reacting self,

That is fine.

But just one hour.

Then you will fall in love with it so much that you will always want to watch before you react.

And it is not by the way some distant watching because sometimes we think,

Oh,

Now I need to be like a wall.

It is immovable and indifferent.

It is not at all.

The silence that you are is the most intimate thing in the world.

It is a crazy love maker.

It is the lover of all things.

It feels everything from the inside.

It unites with what it watches,

With what it listens to.

It really flows into everything.

Without fear,

With curiosity.

Silence starts in you.

Then it fills the whole world.

Isn't that lovely?

I remember when I was 23 years old,

I remember so well the moment in which I was walking on the street and it was sometimes very insignificant moments,

The most significant moments.

It is like such tiny recognitions,

But the realization that you are never going to be the same.

I was walking on the street and then I realized that I fell in love with silence.

That's it.

It wasn't like there were much,

Much,

Much more explosive experiences and so on afterwards.

It was the moment in which something shifted in the mind,

Realizing that it is more attracted to this ground of watchfulness that it wants to see.

It wants to look at everything because before that I saw nothing.

You see there is this Christian song,

I once was blind but now I see,

But it's not about something so grandiose like a God or divine beings,

Angels coming down.

It's just this world that we never looked at.

We only reacted to.

We were only visiting such a small fraction of our own capacity,

Of our own encounter.

Therefore,

Such a small fraction of the world,

Because it is in the way we look,

The way we look determines how much we will see.

If we look in a very small way,

We see a very small world.

Some even say that life is boring,

Which is I think only for those who say that life is boring,

They should get some special prize,

Just for the creativity and imagination of saying such a thing.

Because every moment is so full,

Loaded with intensity,

Meaning and the.

.

.

Why is it moving?

It's so full of meaning and significance and intensity and energy,

But for that it needs our looking.

It needs attention.

It needs us.

Because we are the source of attention and we determine whether the world will be the most amazing place or the dullest,

Most alien space.

Thank you.

Reviews

Asante

I've been sitting looking up at the expansive blue sky, Costa del Sol, Espana and listening to your wonderful story told so magnificently. How blessed I feel right now. It was amazing your insight. I hope I can follow your lead and watch with silence my amazing mind and how it gets me going. I wouldn't call mine 'cute' but I got your point and it made me smile. I'll be checking out more of your lessons soon. Thank you so much for sharing this session with the world.

Thank you for this important insight.

Thank you for this full teaching. I will listen again and again to receive All of the teaching.

Wow! Loved!! Thank you 🙏

Powerful. Namaste. 💫💗🙏

Excellent reminders! Thank you

Beautiful reset. Silence is the crazy love maker! Sees our reactions as “cute” and lovable. Silence is what we are. We are falling in love with ourselves to fall in love with the world. Thank you. 🥰🙏

I can’t put into words the experience of what I heard. I feel like I am just scratching the surface of what silence and the process of finding it can do for my search for peace. I am learning to listen to my thoughts in a new way. Thank you!

Wonderful. Thank you.

Enlightening talk

Thank you sooo much today I have learned a wonderful thing. Silence and to observe and not react. Huge challenge! But I am so happy to have heard this great talk about silence. Silence and peace that I long for!

Fascinating and poses me a great challenge. Thank you for sharing this teaching, it was just what I was looking for today and it found me, the true me.

Interesting and true. Maybe that simple which makes it complicated.
Thank you!
☯️🙏🏼