Silence welling up from the core of our being may be understood, through experience, as the embrace of God.

Silence is not an auditory silence or even a quietness of the mind, it is a state of profound and inexpressible stillness in which God is known and experienced to be one’s true and abiding state.

The state of Silence thrives as the experience of the grace firmament, that expanse of supreme bliss which is the perfect primal entity. Consequently, all other states come to merge in it like many different rivers entering the ocean of Silence.

The Silence that shines in the heart, destroying utterly the objective awareness of the fragmented mind, is totally and perfectly ripe wisdom. For the individual, freedom is coalescing with its unsurpassed ground of being.

The utterly perfect supreme reality whose nature is Silence can only be kissed with Silence.

How wonderful it is that the very mind which was accustomed to moving in the way of the befuddled has now been made to shine with freedom as its own nature!

Do not suffer by wandering along with the mind. What business do you have with it? Through the attention that holds steadfastly to your truth, the beingness that transcends the mind, attain that truth.

Only the divine state of Silence is the state of wisdom. All other states are the imagination of a mind in which the supreme has fragmented.

When Silence occurs, he is the Lord who abides embracing me in a union with Him.

He is the ancient one; He is the immediate one; he exists as the supreme serenity; He is the tranquility immanent; the pure expanse whose essence is He himself, who is my ‘I’.

• Muruganar

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We have been given this life that we might die.

Die, before you die.

Let love alone remain.

Be still and know…

with our being,

through being.

Now then let us deal with the divine and spiritual marriage…

… it should be understood that in this state there is no more thought of the body than if the soul were not in it, but one’s thought is only of the spirit. In the spiritual marriage, there is still much less remembrance of the body because this secret union takes place in the very interior centre of the soul, which must be where God Himself is.

What God communicates here to the soul in an instant is a secret so great and a favour so sublime – and the delight the soul experiences so extreme – that I don’t know what to compare it to. I can only say that the Lord wishes to reveal for that moment, in a more sublime manner than through any spiritual vision or taste, the glory of heaven. One can say no more – insofar as can be understood – than that the soul, I mean the spirit, is made one with God.

… everything corporeal in the soul was taken away and it was left in pure spirit. Thus, the soul could be joined in this heavenly union with the uncreated Spirit. For it is very certain that in emptying ourselves of all that is creature and detaching ourselves from it for the love of God, the same Lord will fill us with Himself.

The Lord puts the soul in this dwelling of His, which is the centre of the soul itself. They say that the empyreal heaven where the Lord is does not move as do the other heavens; similarly, it seems, in the soul that enters here there are none of those movements that usually take place in the faculties and the imagination… ( VII:2)

The first effect is a forgetfulness of self, for truly the soul, seemingly, no longer is.

It experiences strange forgetfulness, for, as I say, seemingly the soul no longer is…  or would want to be…

Nor does the Lord in all the favours He grants the soul here receive any assistance from the soul itself, except what it has already done in surrendering itself totally.

So, in this temple of God, in this His dwelling place, He alone and the soul rejoice together in the deepest silence. ( VII:3)

• St Teresa of Avila. The Interior Castle

The Father spoke one Word, which is his Son, and this word He always speaks in eternal silence, and in silence must it be heard by the soul.

– St John of the Cross