What happens when I first experience inner silence?

Beloved Osho, the other day you talked so beautifully about the sadness which follows the first experience of our innermost silence. Is it necessarily so, that when I first experience this silence, I also feel with my whole being that I am absolutely alone on my journey?

Aloneness is also one of the fundamental experiences as you enter silence. In silence there is nobody else, you are simply alone. The deeper your silence will be, thoughts will be gone, emotions will be gone, sentiments will be gone -- just pure being, a flame of light, burning alone. One can get scared because we are so much accustomed to living with people -- in the crowd, in the marketplace, in all kinds of relationships. You may not be aware that in all these relationships -- with friends, with your husbands, with your wives, with your children, with your parents -- you are basically trying to avoid the experience of aloneness. These are strategies so that you are always with somebody. It is a well-known fact, psychologically established, that if a person is left alone in isolation, after seven days he starts talking... a little like whispering. For seven…

the second alternative is to experience your aloneness, your silence that absolutely virgin spot inside your being where nobody can enter, nobody can trespass that is your true world knowing it, experiencing it, one is surprised that there was no need to escape from it it is one of the most ecstatic experiences even love is secondary the person who has known his aloneness also loves but his love has a tremendous beauty t is positive: he is not escaping from himself he is rooted in himself, centred in himself and because of that rootedness and centering he is so full of joy that he wants to share it his love is a sharing, it is not an escape his love is a gift the other is not being used as a means the other is dignified by his love ordinarily love reduces people into slaves into bondage, into possessiveness,…

We are not the body and we are not the mind either. Mind is also part of the body. The visible part is called body, the invisible part is called mind. It is a psychosomatic mechanism and we are the witness of it. We are in it but we are not it. This is the greatest experience. Once it has happened your life goes through a radical change. Then you are never the same again. It is a breakthrough. The whole effort here is to bring this breakthrough closer and closer. Every support, every technique and device is provided for this breakthrough so that you can see yourself as a witness of it all, as pure consciousness. To know oneself as pure consciousness is to be free of all bondage. It is to be free of birth and death, it is to be free of time.

And the great gifts of life are only for people who are ready to go totally into something, whether it is silence, freedom, truth -- it does not matter what it is. All the ultimate values require you to be a lover. Sannyas is a love affair with silence. The most unique experience of life is that of silence; otherwise life is very noisy. Outside there is noise, inside there is noise, and both together are enough to drive anybody crazy. They have driven the whole world crazy. One has to stop the inner noise -- the outer noise is beyond our control and there is no need either to stop it. But we can stop the inner noise.

Beloved Osho, a while ago you said something about silence which startled me. In my sleepiness, I'd simply thought of it as just an absence -- an absence of noises. But you were saying it had positive qualities, a positive sound. And in my meditations, I've noticed the distinction between a silence in my body and a silence in my mind. I can have the first, without the second. Beloved master, please talk to me about silence.

Anand Somen, silence usually is understood to be something negative, something empty, an absence of sound, of noises. This misunderstanding is prevalent because very few people have ever experienced silence. All that they have experienced in the name of silence is noiselessness. But silence is a totally different phenomenon. It is utterly positive. It is existential, it is not empty. It is overflowing with a music that you have never heard before, with a fragrance that is unfamiliar to you, with a light that can only be seen by the inner eyes. It is not something fictitious; it is a reality, and a reality which is already present in everyone -- just we never look in. All our senses are extrovert. Our eyes open outside, our ears open outside, our hands move outside, our legs... all our senses are meant to explore the outside world. But there is a sixth…