CHAPTER ELEVEN

TRUE AND FALSE MOUNA

1.   "The silence of solitude is forced. Restrained speech in society amounts to silence. For the man then controls his speech. If the speaker is engaged otherwise speech becomes restrained. Introverted mind is otherwise active and is not anxious to speak."
Talk 60

Note: Mouna ^[?] in the spiritual practice is a virtue
sedulously cultivated. Bhagavan says that going to places of solitude for the purpose of cultivating the habit of silence is not of much value; for it is a forced state for lack of company; whereas control of the tongue in society is true silence, and thus true self-control.

The desire to speak arises in the mind, but if the mind is engaged on a subject other than that of the conversation, speech becomes greatly minimised. And the subject on which the mind of the abhyasi ^[?] is usually engaged is the nature of the mind itself, that is, meditation, causing him reluctance to be drawn out by conversation. This is natural, not enforced, mouna.

Bhagavan continues:

2.   "Mouna ^[?] as a disciplinary measure is meant for limiting the mental activities due to speech. If the mind is otherwise controlled disciplinary mouna is unnecessary. For mouna becomes natural."
Talk 60

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Note: Why do sadhakas cultivate silence? In order to silence the mind. But this is holding the stick by the wrong end; for it is not speech that causes thinking, but thinking that causes speaking. Conversation, no doubt, provokes thinking and therefore talking, but if the mind has not been brought under control, even if there is no one to talk to, the mind will talk to itself; memory in particular will surge up and will fill the mind with thoughts of the dead past. The mind in solitude will then be in a far worse condition than in society. Memory is a more dangerous companion than the society of sattvic friends, who may sometimes talk on irrelevant matters, but this may prove a help to the sadhaka, in that it serves to break his brooding over a chain of unhappy events which are dead and gone, and whose resuscitation may depress the mind, which he endeavours to keep cheerful for the sake of a successful sadhana.

"If the mind is otherwise controlled," that is, by dhyana,
vichara and study and by a stubborn resistance to the pressure of memory, vows of protracted silence become not only superfluous but distinctly harmful. Mental stillness is reflected in vocal stillness, which is a natural mouna.

3.   "Vidyaranya has said that twelve years' forced mouna brings about absolute mouna, that is, it makes one unable to speak. It is more like a mute animal than otherwise.
That is no mouna."
Talk 60

Note: The moral is that vows of silence and forced restraint of speech are valueless, if the mind remains restlessly active.
And if it is not so active, it will have no need of compulsion — mouna becomes habitual.

The dig at the forced `mouni' who becomes "like a mute animal than otherwise", is not without justification; for cases are known when forced mouna, instead of making the mouni
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`otherwise' than a "mute animal", that is, divinely inclined, it embittered rather than softened him. Years of self-violence in the end transformed itself into violence towards others.
From initial humility the mind acquired arrogance and self- righteousness, alien to the character of a true seeker. The notion of his being, in his own estimation, a great tapasvin through years of mouna contributed much to this self- inflation. It does not occur to him that all animals are mounis, but are still far from having a controlled mind, or from being holy tapasvins.

4.   "Mouna is constant speech. Inactivity is constant activity."
Talk 60

Note: Is this a paradox or a conundrum? It is neither if we examine it carefully. We have granted above that true silence is that of the mind, which naturally results in vocal silence.
But this mouna has, by negation, a significance and eloquence all its own, more potent than any speech, as the silence of
Sita in the next text will illustrate.

From another and truer point of view the mouna of the mind is not inactivity at all. The still mind is the all-dynamic pure Being, which is the plenum, the source of all phenomena, as we have studied in the previous chapters, and thus omnipotent and omniscient. To come out of this "inactive" Being to doing, to thinking, to talking is in fact dissipation of energy, a degeneration, debilitation, the cause of ignorance and misery. Therefore the "inactivity" of the still mind is immeasurably more potent than the pseudo- activity of the world of action and speech: it is "constant activity".

5.   "When Sita was asked by the wives of the Rishis who was her husband among the then assembled Rishis in the
forest, she denied each one as he by turn was pointed to her, but simply speechlessly hung down her head when
Rama himself was pointed out. Her silence was eloquent.
The Vedas are similarly eloquent in `Neti', `Neti' (`not this', `not this') and then remain silent. Their silence is the Real state. This is the meaning of teaching through silence.
When the source of the `I'-thought is reached, it vanishes and what remains over is the Self."
Talk 130

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Note: Isn't that pretty of Sita? This is an extremely apt illustration about the Self and its negation, which deserves a deeper study. Let us hang on to the `Neti' part of it. We say neti to what? Certainly to all the things we perceive and all the things we conceive — we repudiate the world altogether as false, as unintelligent. What remains as residue is the repudiator or perceiver himself but shorn of all perceptions, and therefore completely inactive — silent. This is the Self, the absolute Intelligence which perceives without being perceived, which thinks without being thought. Thus the practice of `Neti, Neti', of rejection, takes back the sadhaka to himself, as the seer of all sights, hearer of all sounds, smeller of all smells. He first looks around and begins to discard one thing after another till there remains nothing to discard, when a sudden flash of intuition, coming from within himself, from the Self itself, turns him back upon himself and reveals to him the truth of himself, as the logical residue, the pure knower, who cannot be discarded. "This is the meaning,"
Bhagavan avers, "of teaching through silence."

6.   "Mouna ^[?] is not closing the mouth. It is the state which transcends speech and thought. Hold some concept firmly and trace it back. By such concentration silence results. When practice becomes natural it will end in silence. Meditation without mental activity is silence."
Talk 231

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Note: We have therefore to modify our views about vocal mouna and vocal mounis. To repeat, mental silence is the true mouna. It is a state by itself — the real state. How to reach that state? In the last text the neti method is given. Here
Bhagavan gives another method, namely, holding on to only one thought, a single concept. By sticking to one thought, we will attain mouna in all other thoughts. Constantly hopping from one subject to another and not stopping for even a minute on a single subject is the routine work of the mind, and if this butterfly-habit can be curbed to a degree by chaining it to one subject — and one only — it is in itself a great achievement: it will lead to the eventual dropping of even the single concept, when the ultimate state of absolute mouna or samadhi will result.

What does Bhagavan mean by tracing a thought back?

He means that it has to be traced to the mind from which it has arisen, for thoughts can come from nowhere but from the thinker himself: a thought of mine, for example, can come only from my own self. So that by tracing the thoughts to their source the Self can be discovered.

7.   "Is not a vow of silence helpful?"
Bhagavan: "A vow is only a vow. It may help dhyana to some extent. But what is the good of keeping the mouth closed and letting the mind run riot? If the mind is occupied in dhyana, where is the need for speech? Nothing is as good as dhyana. If one takes to action with a vow of silence, what is the good of the vow?"
Talk 371

Note: To work, thinking is necessary, otherwise no work can be done at all, let alone successfully. But silence aims at warding off all thoughts and keeping the mind free.
Therefore to take a vow of silence and continue to work is worse than contradicting oneself — it is self-delusion, let
alone the ordeal it causes to the people with whom one works.

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True mouna from speech comes naturally and spontaneously to the very few who have succeeded in killing their minds through dhyana. One such was the famous
Mounaswami of Kumbakonam, whose very look, even in the photograph, impresses one with the awe due to a great tapasvin who is the personification of SILENCE. He passed over to the other side about one hundred years ago without raising a gasp or a flicker of the eyelid. He had been a Videhamukta ^[?] even in life, when he could hardly distinguish between sleep and samadhi, between hunger and repletion.
Food and drink used ultimately to be poured into his mouth.
The half-opened eyes were hardly aware of things outside, and the body was kept by a filament of breathing for a few years. His is the natural mouna and himself the genuine
Mouni. Sri Bhagavan himself was almost in that state the first few years of his Illumination. Temporary mouna for brief spells of occasional `retreat' is quite understandable. It helps warding off intruders on one's devotions. But long-drawn- out professional mouna must be left strictly alone, particularly if it is accompanied by work among other people and based on a vow.

Let us always remember the Master's words that
"nothing is as good as dhyana", which has to take the first place in the practice of sadhana: it produces the maximum results in the minimum time.