The experience of being silent
pp. 309-320
in: Ronald Valle (ed), Phenomenological inquiry in psychology, Berlin, Springer, 1998Abstract
Silence has captivated the human psyche from time immemorial. In the fables of the Golden Age, it is said that primordial humankind understood the language of all animals, trees, rocks, and natural elements. This first language, it is believed, came from the fullness of silence and communion with the Divine, in which the Divine and the individual existed as one. The biblical "fall" refers to the awareness of the separation between the individual and the Divine. It was precisely because of this standing out of individuals from the primordial wholeness and oneness of all things in the Divine that this union was broken and the dual nature of reality emerged. In turn, the self or ego was born and the incessant struggle for reconnection or union with the Divine was initiated.