We invited Lord Ganesha to our world and He was with us for 10 days. We said our prayers, religiously every morning and evening, we changed our busy routines and schedules. We set aside the mechanical rush of the modern world, just to be heard by the Lord. Today, Lord Ganesha has departed, but we couldn’t receive his blessing. The Lord spoke to us, but we couldn’t hear Him. We stood near him, but he couldn’t see us.
He didn’t hear us because we surrounded Him with deafening sounds; he didn’t see us because of the glaring lights. And even as we bid farewell to the Lord today, and said our last prayers with emotions of joy and sadness, we gave Him a grand send-off with loud live bands and high decibels from loudspeakers that played cheap bollywood movie songs.
We live in the “Age of noise”. Physical noise, mental noise and the noise of desire. We are surrounded by the ringing of telephones, the clatter of keyboards, loud TV volumes, and high decibel sounds from vehicles on the road. Particles of noise cling to our souls – and they can only be cleansed in the waters of silence.
The living saint, Dada J.P. Vaswani writes, “I like to think of still, profound silence as personal, intimate appointment with God. And for those who wish to walk the way of spirituality, silence is the first and simplest step of the path. Silence is not just the absence of sound; silence has its own being; it is with you, within you. Silence is the language of the soul. Silence is two-fold, there is outer silence which is freedom from noise and there is inner silence which is freedom from clamour and desires. Silence cleanses. Silence heals, Silence strengthens, Silence reveals.”
It’s time that we realize that Lord speaks to us through silence. It is only in the depths of silence can we hear His Divine voice – not in the clamour and noise of this world. The most essential ingredient in prayer is not words, but the silence of the communion.”