“True silence has absolutely nothing to do with the world. True silence is omnipresence, is all-pervading. Your real nature is silence. Always remember, it is different than just keeping still. Anyone can keep still for a while, maybe a couple of seconds, before the mind starts attacking you. But true silence is when you go deeper, where you forget about your body, you forget about your affairs, your mind, your world, and you enter that atmosphere where there is bliss-consciousness.
True silence is the nature of creation. The planets turn on their axis, the galaxies spin through space. … Everything is in a state of flux. Everything moves. Yet, it’s all very silent. You do not hear a thing. If you get up at four o’clock in the morning and go outside and look, what do you hear? You hear silence, deep silence, total silence, beautiful silence. It is not hard to get into that type of silence. You simply begin to sit still and become oblivious to everything.
It will happen by itself. You will go deeper, and deeper, and deeper, and deeper, until you’re no longer aware of your body or your surroundings. The true silence can be kept up at all times. You do not have to sit to go into the silence any more. In the beginning stages you do, for you’re learning how to keep silent. But as time goes by, you can be shopping in the market place, you can be working in the factory, you can be washing dishes, you can be doing all kinds of things, and you will be in the silence.”
~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)