Hazrat Ali r.a said, "Words are under your control until you have spoken them, but you come under their control once you have spoken them."

 

Commonly speaking, we know and communicate with life around us through our five senses of perception. The tongue and ears provide a vital connection to the world we live in. With the help of the ears we can hear and with the use of the tongue we can respond in words and communicate our thoughts. All sound is vibration and in fact thought has also been defined as a vibratory effect. The only difference in thought and speech is the difference in subtlety. Thought is a more refined and subtler vibration than the grosser and heavier vibration of speech. The physical body and the soul are also opposite to each other on the basis of a finer and grosser atomic constellation. The soul is made of light while the body is made of grosser elements.

 

In the material world we witness phenomena through the help of the physical body. Just as the nearer we are to the sun the more is our vision blinded to seeing, and the farther removed we become from the intensity of the sunlight, the greater clarity is achieved in our sense of seeing or identifying material objects around us. The fact that we need the physical body to experience life in the physical realm does not mean that it is the physical body that is the subject of experience. In fact, it is the Soul that is the true witness in experiencing life. The physical body is but an instrument for the experience of the soul. This instrument of the physical body is required only in the physical realm. Due to the fine vibrations of the soul body, it cannot be seen, felt or heard like the material body.

 

If we take this thought a little further back we understand that the whole of the material manifestation is nothing but a grosser effect of the finer source of life. We learn from the Hadith of the Holy Prophet Muhammad s.w that the first thing that was created was the Prophetic Light and thereafter everything else in creation was created from that Light.
In the Bible it is said that in the beginning there was the Word and the Word was with God. This refers to the Logos. The Logos is the Cosmic Reason which gave rise to the world of intelligibility. It is the Word of God which manifested as Thought and then took on material shape, and the world of manifestation appeared. What precedes word and thought is silence. This silence, however, is not an empty silence, but a silence pregnant with all the richness that exists. From the silence of the depths of Divine Being emerged the sublimely rich Speech of God which is the cosmic creation.

 

In this physical realm we become so used to our physical bodies and the material life that we forget our origin and our return. Our physical lives are only a brief interlude within the greater scope of our true existence. We are essentially spirit, i.e, light bodies in the garb of physicality composed of different elements. It is not the eye that sees nor the ear that hears but the Soul Power. When the soul is withdrawn from the body at the time of death, then the same body that performed diverse functions lays lifeless. The audible speech is only a grosser projection of the finer thought vibrations.

 

On the path of spirituality one is required to go back to the source of all things until one returns to the Source of sources. It is only then that we can truly enter the life of purity. Everything other than the True Source is nothing but adulteration. Mystics therefore practice meditation and silence and prefer solitude to the noise of the crowd. Their objective is to recreate that stillness within and around themselves which is their Origin and Return.

 

The Prophet Muhammad s.w stressed the virtue for man in controlling that which is between his teeth, in other words, the tongue. The capricious and unguarded use of the tongue can lead to much trouble in a person’s life. Evils such as lying, backbiting, slandering, sowing discord are all produced by the misuse of speech. Speech is a Divine Gift which has been given to man for him to glorify, praise and proclaim the Supreme Truth. When we use it for the sake of all the above mentioned negative acts then we do great injustice to this Divine Favour and also lose the opportunity given us for the sake of our upliftment and growth.

 

The deeper one becomes in one’s thought and being, the more one begins to practice silence in one’s life. Silence, we begin to find and discover, is more communicative than speech. It is in silence alone that we can hear the Divine Voice within us. Our heart and our conscience speak too us only when the noise of the ego is turned down. All that makes a noise is falsehood, and the language of Truth is a silent Power.
As Hazrat Ali r.a said that the spoken word controls us but unsaid, words remain our subjects. We must therefore be very wise in the use of our speech. The sign of an intelligent person is that he/she thinks before speaking and the foolish think after speaking. But the sage speaks through his/her silence. The sign of wisdom is that thought is always kept pure and positive, grounded in the Real.

 

In this age of great spiritual ignorance and darkness, it is vital for man to discover his/her true self. Spiritual enlightenment is the result of the reversal of ordinary consciousness. We turn our attention within instead of keeping it focused externally. It is in the silence of the soul that we can truly know our selves.

Suggested Spiritual Practice.

During the course of the day, one may try to practice silence for a determined period of time, perhaps half an hour or an hour depending on one’s readiness and inclination.