THE GOD-MAN The Life, Journeys and Work of Meher Baba with an ...

410 THE GOD-MANIn the same year, 1954, he said:"If you were to ask me why I do not speak, I would say I am not silent, and that I speak more eloquentlythrough gestures and the alphabet board."If you were to ask me why I do not talk, I would say, mostly for three reasons. Firstly, I feel that throughyou all I am talking eternally. Secondly, to relieve the boredom of talking incessantly through your forms, Ikeep silence in my personal physical form. And thirdly, because all talk in itself is idle talk. Lectures,messages, statements, discourses of any kind, spiritual or otherwise, imparted through utterances or writings,are just idle talk when not acted upon or lived up to."If you were to ask me when I will break my silence, I would say, when I feel like uttering the only realWord that was spoken in the beginningless beginning, as that Word alone is worth uttering. The time for thebreaking of my outward silence to utter that Word is very near."Those who have been in his presence know that Baba communicates through his silence.What proceeds from him is beyond words, does not need words, could not be contained in them. Theinaudible sound is from heart to heart: silence that penetrates mind and heart. He sometimes reminds thosewho read or listen to what he 'says' that he uses another language from theirs, which should be rememberedwhen his words are considered. That is, his standpoint is different from those who listen. He is on the levelof the listener, but his standpoint is absolute, i.e. timeless and essential, while that of the listener is relative,i.e. in the terms of earthly life and history. Silence is not only a matter of non-speaking, but silence of thedesires, passions, urgings and conflicts of body and mind. In those who practise it, silence brings aboutcalmness and harmony in the body, making it a ready instrument: it is complete self-possession.Baba's silence places him among the intangible, the unrecorded and not documented, a positive sign thathe does not wholly belong to the rational world of facts and events but to the inner world of insight andintuition.(4)This suggests that something should be said of the silence of Baba in connection with the great amount ofwriting bearing his name, of