Muzaffar Ali

Silence is broken by needs, with the act of asking, with the urge of wanting...
Betalab vo de raha hai chup raho
kuchh kaha to baat khaali jayegi
(Without asking, you are being given,
if you ask, your words may go blank)
...so mumbled a Sufi faqir calligrapher, who was challenged by his speech.

The Indian-Eastern wisdom was a subtle way of achieving the impossible without visible effort. It was a way of making the unimaginable happen. Many a times this phenomenon could not be explained so it was called a “miracle”.

Bhika baat agham ki, kahan sunan ki nahi
Jo jaane so kahe nahi, jo kahe so jaane nahi
(Bhika, the truth is, not said or heard. Those who know, do not say, and those who say, know not...)

The art of silence is the act of not asking. It is the state of knowing. A state of Ching-jing Wu-wei, sitting and doing nothing. It is the acuteness of perception without the bitterness of not achieving it in a given time scale.
But is it possible today?
The Industrial Revolution changed the perception of reality by subjugating societies to their needs. The notion of fulfilling these needs was a false sense of freedom, a way of expressing oneself without truly getting what one wants.
Instead, objects of desire began to distract one from truth, from inner wisdom.
Modern marketing explored needs. Made them dynamic and aligned them with a mass production and mass consumption process. The Hidden Persuaders (Vance Packard) and the Subliminal Seduction (Wilson Bryan Key) took their art to perfection on a global scale. “The Medium became the Message” and this became the truth for the modern civilisation. A truth that materially made the impossible possible.
Today, modern communication has achieved a way of entering the “no entry” zone of the human psyche. But along with it, the one thing that the commercialised and industrialised cultures and societies have done is to create blockages, traffic jams, congestions and a high rate of obsolescence of ideas and concepts.
In the Eastern sense, the relationship between human dependence and human independence is the area that can be truly understood through the art of silence. From the art of silence we evolve the etiquette of listening... hearing... of samaat. From hearing, we open the passage to the soul. Mechanical sounds do not allow the opening of the soul passage, but only the body passage. Life is art and art is the connection between the mind, heart and body. Civilisation is a series of ways to connect the body and soul and has manifested itself in a million mysterious miracles.
The art of silence leads to many art forms as it opens the door to the soul. When you paint you develop a soul-to-soul connection with the subject. It could be just strokes or the relationship between colours and their textures, or form in space... silence is the most potent source of inspiration for all arts. And it is through the arts that we see the connectivity between various artistic expressions. Between poetry and painting, painting and film, film and poetry, words and images, music and sound. Forms just flow in and out of one another creating an artistic mind, in which silence is occasionally and intentionally broken when forms and creative ideas integrate and unify, but without breaking the thread of silence, which is the source of perception. It is in this deep state of art that human beings achieve the highest level of sensitivity. A state in which everything appears forever new, forever regenerating and rejuvenating. This is the paradise of the Sufis, a world within a world, a universe born out of silence in which you only hear your self, and every part of your self responds to everything you feel and see.
Cultures have achieved greatness when they attain this state and live in its celebration. They become unassailable. They impact other cultures with their power and intensity. This indefinable power is like the hydrocarbon that propels modern machines. It is the energy that moves the human being to create, invent and innovate.
Usually we take on more than what we can do in life. In the 24 hours we are given in a day or in the seven days of the week, the art of silence lets the relevant surface to the top and allows focused action on it. People who are following their heart are self-employed. They are setting their own agenda and timelines and their meditative minds lead to enhanced creativity. The fear here is that they develop intense human relationships which are demanding on their time and output.
But the flip side is that creativity accumulates near such minds as they receive maximum stimulus for their own art from human element and its predicament around them. In such a situation the art of silence helps to give more than you think you loose. In fact, this art of silence in collective human situation brings with it an enormous charge. This is the richness of our heritage and the inspiration of our classical art forms, now threatened by the commercialised complexion of our modern society. Have we come of age or have we too entered the realm of mass consumption and heightened needs, but with much more noise and more mindlessly than one can ever imagine?

— Muzaffar Ali is a filmmaker and painter. He is the executive director and secretary of the Rumi Foundation. He can be contacted at www.rumifoundation.in