Silence

SILENCE is the best language.
SILENCE is the true teaching.
SILENCE is my unique and only reference. ~ Yolande

Love is to be conscious of eternity … LOVE does not think itself … IT IS … simply … before thinking of being.
~ Yolande Duran

"It happened in August 2003. The day had started like any other summer’s day. My son had gone out. I was at home alone, doing this and that. Then all of a sudden I noticed…

There was a silence in my head. Yes, silence. It was strange – where had my thoughts gone? There was a space, an interval between my thoughts that made them seem as if they were in the background. As if they no longer belonged to me, or at least no longer had any hold over me. I felt a lightness, a well-being, I felt in tune with and connected to myself like never before. Connected to something that I could not explain nor find words for: this silence… I wondered what had happened to me. And I started taking notes... It felt as if my inner mode of functioning had changed. Suddenly – like being struck by lightning – something had come upon me. I had not seen it coming and it had taken hold of me unawares. This thing that words cannot describe had taken over everything.

I just noticed that everything was different. At the time, it was the silence that struck me. But in the days that followed, I realized that I was no longer experiencing things as I had done previously. The dozens of trivialities that used to irritate me every day, a door banging, the keys that disappear just when you are ready to go out, some worry or other, all the minute details that used to constantly bother me, without my being aware that they did: none of that bothered me anymore. If I noticed the door wasn’t properly closed or the keys weren’t in my pocket, I went and closed the door, started looking for my keys – without the slightest comment, either thought or spoken. Things were what they were. My way of perceiving them, of reacting to them, had changed. I was not reacting anymore because the silence, the tranquility, had completely invaded me, and allowed me simply to see the situation the way it was. At first, I kept it to myself, watched it deep inside, wondering what on earth it could be. As I had just turned forty, I said to myself: Wow! It’s wonderful turning forty! I finally feel in tune with myself! I feel so light, so good.

Yes, that’s what I told myself in the beginning. But when I started talking to people around me about it, I noticed that, even though they had turned forty they did not feel like I did – they did not see things the way I did. All my friends were rationalists – materialists even. Like me, they were all busy with daily life. They had never asked themselves metaphysical questions or opened a ‘spiritual’ book, or read about personal development, any more than I had. They knew me as a person who was always on the go: hardly had I arrived somewhere than I already wanted to be somewhere else. And now they saw me laid back, calm, serene. But they did not know anything more about what I was experiencing than I did.

That is when I started wondering about what happens in the invisible world, about what happens inside oneself. I started searching, going into bookstores, looking for books that just might explain a little something of what I was experiencing. As time went on, I stopped trying to understand. The more time went by, the more I let this thing take over, content to observe, discover what was happening, discover everything that kept on coming, ever more intense, more alive, more clear. However in the beginning I wanted to understand.

Very soon after that, there was the accident. It happened two months later, at the end of October. I was away on a business trip in the North of France. The cell phone was silent: no network. And then I connected to a network and saw all these messages waiting for me. Wow, I thought, something must have happened. I dialed a number. At the end of the line, my best friend faltered: “Your son…. On the road…. An accident… he’s gone….” At first, I don’t think I believed it. ‘An accident’, that I could understand. As for the rest: It’s not possible, she made a mistake! And I drove, I drove to the agreed meeting place, my sister’s house. I didn’t think, I just drove. At one point, there was one thought: If this is true, my life is ruined. But this thought did not last. It collapsed into this same tranquility that I had been living for the past few weeks. When I got to my sister’s, they were all there waiting for me. My family, my friends, everyone. So I knew it must be true. Everyone drew around me, to tell me about the tragedy. I felt a sort of release, I let myself go.

The situation was what it was – no tears, no crisis. I went up to my room where it was quiet. I saw my friends and family, worried, come to see what I was up to. I saw them trying to talk to me, trying to find out where I was at with it all. In fact, I was quite calm. The hours passed, it was still the same: I saw that people were busying themselves with things, but how can I put it? Deep inside me there was no agitation, no revolt. Not the slightest outburst, no agonized cry like: It’s not possible! This should not have happened.

I have a hard time remembering exactly what happened, but I did not feel the pain that everyone thought I would. I saw that pain is not caused by a situation. At least, not in my case, not when there is this silence; the situation cannot cause me any pain because pain cannot co-exist with silence. At first I did not say anything to anyone. I could not act a part either. So I stayed the way I was – calm. Of course, I didn’t jump for joy, but I did not fall apart either. I was in a sort of neutral space. My close friends, thinking I was devastated, said, “It hasn’t hit her yet.” But it wasn’t that. I had totally understood, but I still perceived this same silence in my head, that enabled me to stay calm. I let the weeks go by, one after the other, with agitation and upset all around me. There was the funeral, the condolences, the absence; but I experienced all of this from within a tranquility, which never ceased. I had to admit the obvious – that something deep inside me enabled me to live through all this in peace. It was incredible, yet it was true.

Then an intense feeling of wonderment struck me deep inside. And I let myself go with it, more and more, deeper and deeper. After a while it was so enjoyable that I let myself be totally taken over by it. And the more time passed, the more I felt it there, deep inside me, strong and gentle and caring and everything one can imagine… about the unimaginable. Those around me thought I was numb. They were waiting for the moment when I would fi nally realize what had happened and move on to an overt grieving process. But I was totally conscious, I knew what had happened! What I did notice, back then, were moments of sadness, how can I put it – I saw them. I saw them coming, I saw them leaving. I felt the emotion coming. Then, I felt it, as it was there, but I could not hold on to it. So it continued on its way. It left.

This neutrality is not indifference. Of course, seeing me from the outside, someone could think I was numbed out, that I wasn’t feeling anything. But on the inside, everything I was experiencing was very intense. I was not in the least bit dead. There were moments of sadness, moments of burnout, but they flowed on through me. Silence, this unknown space, was constantly there. And the more time passed, the more I abandoned myself to this thing that had awakened within me, that had taken over everything. I fell madly in love with it. Everything else subsided into the background.

It’s not easy to put this into words. This invisible thing is ineffable. It manifests through this remarkable silence as an intensity, a strength, a gentleness. But all this, all this manifestation is already in the background. This thing is before the manifestation. It is before everything I thought I was, before everything I thought reality was, both inside and outside me. Can you say more?Once upon a time, the reality I was living in consisted of a waking state, a dreaming state and a sleeping state, and an individual who experienced these three states. Suddenly, this thing stepped in front of all that. It is what illuminates these three worlds – waking, dreaming and sleeping. It has taken over these three states and their contents. It has taken over everything. Everything has retreated into the background.

As if it existed prior to everything I thought I was, prior even to what I see, feel and think. It is as if a seeing has taken hold within me. This seeing observes that this thing is both much stronger and much gentler than anything that could possibly exist, than anything I thought I was, than anything that can be thought or imagined. So once I recognized that, once I saw how I was at ease with that, I completely abandoned myself to it. As if I no longer existed as an individual, like I did before. As if something of myself had ended; as if this thing had a sudden power such that it was guiding me, as it guides me now. As if the individual, the ego, had ceased reconstructing itself from moment to moment.

Of course we all think we make decisions, that we’ve decided to do this, go there, do that – I used to believe it too. But since this happened I am profoundly sure that is not the case. I am sure that this thing exists prior to the three states, prior to the sense of I/me as well. It is what enables all that to appear, to take place. It is more than a vision. There’s no arguing about it. It’s a deep feeling, something that is so strong, that if in the moment, I only see what everyone else sees – a sofa, a table, someone sitting opposite me – this vision is there even before that. And it is so strong that it takes the place of what my eyes and other senses seem to tell me. The eyes seeing, the ears hearing, the skin feeling, are no longer used to define reality. For on a profound level, this thing is there before everything else, all the time, every single moment. It is there prior to all phenomena, prior to all the experiences that made up my existence in the past. Or, if I try to say it in another way, phenomena are seen, as it were, from this thing which is in the foreground; and everything I see, hear or sense in any way appears in the background. Even what I see with my eyes closed, which is so much more real than ordinary reality.

When I lie down, when I close my eyes and relax, I slip into another state. It is not at all like the waking state, nor the dreaming state nor deep sleep. I am totally conscious; at the same time I have lost all awareness of my body. I have the impression I am nothing but sight – sight with eyes closed. There, phenomena appear: faces, landscapes, intense and fleeting forces, things charged with such reality that, once back in the waking state, the words ‘seeing’ or ‘real’ take on a totally different meaning. But even without these phenomena even in daily life, ‘seeing’ has taken on a totally different flavor. Because the silence prevents us from recreating ourselves from moment to moment, because it prevents us from interfering, thinking, projecting and maintaining this mental filter. Reality appears to be much more alive, much more real.

It’s as if the moment in which the radical change (or whatever it is called) took place is etched into the present so that it’s visible all the time. That moment cannot be forgotten; it has given meaning to all the rest. This something is there before everything else and enables me to perceive things without being there. Something which, in hindsight, lets me know that what I see, what appears before me, appears now, and only now. In a split second, what appeared is finished, gone. There is nothing but now. The previous moment, the following moment, are just two abstract ideas. The deep feeling, the invisible thing, that always plunges me into this sensing, is really what sees. It is a strong, obvious clarity that no longer allows me to blind myself with what my physical eyes see. It is simultaneous; at the same time I see with my eyes, just like I used to, I see things appearing, just like I used to, but at the same time I perceive the silence, the constant presence which prevents me from staying in the head, in the past, in the future. This simultaneity brings me to life in the moment. This is what makes the moment so intense, and it is this, too, that results in there being nothing but the moment. Because there is simply no room for anything else. This is true for ‘Yolande’ and it can be true for anyone else, too. I would say it is the intensity, this sensation in the foreground, which sees. It is before seeing, before the eyes, before the sense of sight. And it sees before the eyes – so what does it see with? (Silence takes over, broken only by the discordant music of a lawn-mower)

It sees – period. I don’t perceive through my eyes, nor through my understanding or my thoughts. And this vision is so powerful that I cannot take the phenomena that appear for real. I just can’t. That has become impossible. At the same time, the silence, the constant presence, is so intense that I feel that I am constantly alive – alive like never before. Even in those uncomfortable moments in life when I am sick, tired or whatever, this sensation, the presence, is there. So I feel like I am really alive.

Words fall short. It is touch without being touched, something is there that is neither touch nor emotion. It is what you might call the joy of being nothing. In this intensity, the presence is so… present, that I cannot be anywhere else. I cannot get caught up in my thoughts, or by what I see, what I feel or what I do. It is as if the ego cannot reconstruct itself anymore. It is like a fourth state which is so strong, so alive that it prevents me from returning to one of the three usual states – waking, dreaming or deep sleep. There’s no functioning in a personal way like before. At the same time, this presence feels like a sensation that could be likened, at a stretch, to touch. Touch, as in a finger poised at the level of the heart.

It emanates from the heart and encompasses everything. Everything that appears, from one minute to the next, appears within this thing. This profound feeling that I am there without being there. Something continues to see, to function, but I can no longer be tricked or trapped in my old psyche. Things perceived no longer have any power. They are there in the background. Even if Yolande’s way of doing things does not seem to have changed, inside, this thing is there in the foreground, each and every minute there in the foreground.

Clearly it diminishes the importance of what is experienced. All attention is focused on the silence, the presence, whether or not I want it to do so. There is nothing but that and everything that happens from one minute to the next is there in the background. It’s exciting. I have fallen in love with this thing, fallen in love with the present moment, or, more precisely with what precedes the present moment. I have fallen in love with this thing that makes it possible to live in a calm and gentle fashion. This vision which sees, which enables seeing without the I/me being there: how could anyone do anything but fall hopelessly in love with it!”

~ Yolande Duran-Serrano, In 2003, and as a result of a spontaneous awakening, Yolande quits her career and her lifestyle to devote  herself to the observation of the silence/presence she speaks of. She currently shares her experience and her point of view in gatherings and retreats all over the world:

"The whole problem arises from the belief that we are this person. Silence is our true source and is natural in every one of us"