The Sense of Silence.

There have been several times since I’ve lived in this house when I experienced profound silence. No singing of birds or calling of animals, no traffic on the lane, no aircraft passing overhead, no wind to persuade the trees to whisper, no hint of human activity, nothing. Only silence.

I’m prepared to change the verb from ‘experienced’ to ‘felt.’ It’s palpable. But how can it be so described when there is no external sensation, as there is with wind and rain and the heat of the sun? I don’t know, and yet I’m half convinced that silence has an energy of its own, an energy so subtle that it makes its presence evident only to consciousness – two manifestations of an energy so rarefied that it resides in the last outpost of reality before the abstract, and yet is strong enough to move the mind to a sense of wonder.

I remember having the same experience as a child, only on those occasions I fancied I could hear a gentle hum somewhere inside, and sometimes I thought I could discern a hint of magenta in the air. I remember saying to my mother that it was like the calm before a thunderstorm.

The internal hum and the coloured air have gone now. Now I just experience the sensation, so does that represent a coming of age or the losing of a gift? I don’t know, but I expect the only reason my mother didn’t sell me to the first passing yogi she met was the fact that yogis were even rarer in my neck of the woods than the energy of silence.