Anil Kumar.R

Khalil Jibran says in his renowned classic The Prophet “ A seeker of silences am I and What treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence”. Al Mustafa, the speaker has spent long years in the city of Orphalese. Now it is the time for him to depart and he is compelled to speak out from his soul. Jibran in his enchanting poetic language, overflowing with immense spirituality, opens his heart to his followers.

The moments of silence are quite often more eloquent than an incessant chatter of words and vociferous altercations. They are not really silent, but often filled with sounds of trudging thoughts, roaring emotions, thundering remembrances and inner soliloquies.

“Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn!”. George Bernard Shaw expresses his views through one of his characters in his play As far as Thought can reach in his series Back to Methuselah. The characters speak.

Arjillax :”Listen to me all of You, Ecrasia , be silent if you are capable of silence”.

Ecrasia : “Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn!. That is what I feel for your revolting bursts”.

It is a snippet of a heated argument between Arjillax and Ecrasia over some sculptures. Here Bernard Shaw says that silence can express contempt without the use of any words.

The Power of silence is immense. Gandhiji in his autobiography “My experiments with Truth “, narrates one such incident of his childhood. After the smoking and stealing episode, Gandhiji writes a confession and hands over the paper to his father who was bed ridden. It follows “He read it through, and pearl-drops trickled down his cheeks, wetting the paper. For a moment he closed his eyes in thought and then tore up the note. He had sat up to read it. He again lay down. I also cried. I could see my father's agony. If I were a painter I could draw a picture of the whole scene today. It is still so vivid in my mind. Those pearl-drops of love cleansed my heart, and washed my sin away.”

Ramana Maharshi used silence as a tool to impart spiritual knowledge. People used to sit in his presence, in his radiating silence and feel that their doubts are getting cleared. Probably when you are sitting in silence in front of such a noble person, mind may be more clear and more concentrated and knowing one’s self may be easier.

The chatterboxes can often become annoying. The endless chatter that clung to the ears devoid of any worth full thought can become a dreadful nightmare. One may be afraid to be a witness or a participant of such an uneasy circumstance of getting terribly bored. The contemporary presenters of TV and radio programmes are one such lot. Even though there are many exemplary people in this field, many of them, who are ruling the roost, belongs to a different genre. They endlessly spit out their vocal cords and will be trying to make an impression on the listeners that they are omniscient, omnipotent and all others are worthless. Their expressions often remind us of the buffoons of the circus who are trying to cheer up people. In olden days, in the weekly market of rural areas there were such lectures for selling quack medicines.

But the deliberate silences can often do more harm than good. Martin Luther King said in one of his speeches, “It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on time.” There are many examples of such apathetic silence like the silence of Bhishma in Mahabharata when Draupadi was dragged into the assembly of Kauravas . Even though he was the most respectable and the one with commanding powers over the assembly, he did not speak out to prevent the situation which resulted in the great destruction and bloodshed- in the War.

The silent movies of Charlie Chaplin are prime examples of the eloquence of silence. His films like The Kid, Gold Rush, City Lights etc. were able to achieve what later films with the facility for sound re production could not achieve. Also many directors of parallel cinema used the combination of stunning visuals and back ground music instead of using a theater approach in their films to tell the stories. Possibly the English Poet John Keats had written in his Ode on a Grecian Urn to emphasize the beauty of remaining unheard to the sensual ear.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: