The Unending Noise

Beyond a particular decibel level, sound is intolerable to human beings. If one has to live or work under such conditions, he becomes deaf, ill, nervous and neurotic, if not altogether mad. That is sound at one level, which is on the outside.

It can perhaps be taken care of with ear plugs or the police keeping a watch on the amplifiers etc. While this noise pollution is a problem for the city dweller, the villager does not face it in his natural surroundings, except when a wedding or a Bhajan sammelan takes place.

But the inward sound of the self in each man, wherever he lives is something that is never silenced. One may try to drown these thought waves which constitute the interminable sound of the self through so-called techniques of meditation, but such suppression of thought only results in its re-emergence with increased vigor, after the 'meditation' is over. Thus, all attempts to suppress thought or to kill it may be futile.

Instead of all these vain attempts, one may as well see the futility of thought itself, which goes round and round a problem, without ever solving it. If the matter is something that can be dealt with through securing the necessary information or by consulting an expert in the field, naturally one adopts such a course of action. If on the other hand, the problem has arisen on account of a lot of emotion and feeling getting mixed up with it, then one has to carefully see what the problem is, and from where it has originated.

If one examines it objectively, one will be able to discern that any problem so called, is created by oneself. There are, no doubt, circumstances in every one's life which may relate to money, relationships, missed opportunities, various forms of injustice, etc. Circumstances, however, are not necessarily problems. It is only when one wants a thing to shape itself according to one's wishes, and when it does not happen, that the 'problem' arises. Hence, a problem is invariably self- created, and defies a solution, so long as the self operates on the circumstance.

Thoughts connected with such unresolved problems continue to grow in one's mind, and the afflicted mind never has any silence at any moment. The sound of these thoughts is heard very loudly by the person concerned, and he does not know what to do with them, except attempt to escape through drink, drugs, and cheap entertainment. But all these tricks of the mind will never solve the problem, unless one looks at the problem with all his energy, and traces the problem down to its very source i.e., the self.

Once it is tackled at that level, even while the problem is taking shape or being born, one can free himself of the problem. The 'Circumstance' will of course remain to be dealt with, but as a free man you can deal with it to the best of your ability, since you are no longer involved in it. The quietness and the silence that arise when you are 'problem free', and act only when it is necessary to act in respect of circumstances, is the silence ensuing from the absence of the self.

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