The Altered State of Silence - Promoted by Both New Agers and Christian Leaders

Different than finding a quiet place away from noise and distractions, the silence is referring to a stillness of the mind.


Ray Yungen, author of A Time of Departing, says it is like putting the mind in neutral. Contemplatives say it is like tuning into another frequency. New Agers call it different things like a thin place, sacred space, ecstasy; whatever it is called, both New Agers and Christian leaders are telling us we must practice silence and stillness if we really want to know God. Here is a sampling:


"What you need is stillness and silence so that the sediment can settle and the water can become clear." —Ruth Haley Barton, "Beyond Words"

"The basic method promoted in The Cloud is to move beyond thinking into a place of utter stillness with the Lord ... the believer must first achieve a state of silence and contemplation, and then God works in the believer’s heart."—Tony Jones, The Sacred Way, p. 15.

"Progress in intimacy with God means progress toward silence.... It is this recreating silence to which we are called in Contemplative Prayer.—Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home (NY: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 155

"It is through silence that you find your inner being."—Vijay Eswaran, In the Sphere of Silence, excerpt from website.

"This book [In the Sphere of Silence] is a wonderful guide on how to enter the realm of silence and draw closer to God."—New Age sympathizer, Ken Blanchard

"[G]o into the silence for guidance"—New Ager, Wayne Dyer, ATOD p. 18 (from AM Northwest Morning Talk Show, KATU Channel 2, Portland, OR, Interview with Wayne Dyer, March 27, 1997)


"While we are all equally precious in the eyes of God, we are not all equally ready to listen to 'God's speech in his wondrous, terrible, gentle, loving, all embracing silence.'"—Richard Foster, Prayer, Finding the Heart's True Home, p. 156.

"When one enters the deeper layers of contemplative prayer one sooner or later experiences the void, the emptiness, the nothingness ... the profound mystical silence ... an absence of thought." —Thomas Merton biographer, William Johnston, William Johnston, Letters to Contemplatives, (Orbus Books, 1992), p. 13.


"In the silence is a dynamic presence. And that’s God, and we become attuned to that."—Interspiritualist, Wayne Teasdale, Michael Tobias, A Parliament of Souls in Search of a Global Spirituality (KQED Inc., San Francisco, CA, 1995), p. 148.


"I do not believe anyone can ever become a deep person [intimate with God] without stillness and silence." —Charles Swindoll, So You Want To Be Like Christ? (Nashville, TN: W Publishing Group, a div. of Thomas Nelson, 2005), p. 65

"The most important human activity in the life of any believer is spending time with God in meditation," referring to his 3 part series, Meditation: The Power of Silence.—http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/thesilence.

"One of the great things silence does, it gives us a new concept of God."—Calvin Miller, from Be Still DVD

"God's Word is so clear that if we are not still before Him, we will never truly know, to the depths of the marrow in our bones, that He is God. There has got to be a stillness. We’ve got to have a time to sit before Him and just know that He is. We live in such an attention-deficit culture, and we're so entirely over stimulated, so much coming at us at once, one image after another, that if we are not careful, we are going to lose the art of meditation." —Beth Moore, from Be Still DVD, "Contemplative Prayer: The Divine Romance Between God and Man"

"Kierkegaard, probably the greatest Protestant Christian mind of all time, said ... "If I could prescribe only one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence." Peter Kreeft , from Be Still DVD

"To be still means not only that you make a time to sit with God, but a time for your mind and your heart to be still also. Then God can meet you and fill you with His presence and His Word."-- Henry Cloud (CCN), "Being Still: Helpful Hints with Dr. Henry Cloud"

"What does stillness really mean? Is stillness just something physical? Or is it mental? Is it spiritual? Is it emotional? There’s so many levels of stillness that we need to practice. And know. Be still and know. Know what? You know, there’s something that comes with the assurance of being still. You’re no longer practicing or exerting effort." Michelle McKinney Hammond, from Be Still DVD, "Contemplative Prayer: The Divine Romance Between God and Man"

"Suppose they [churches] practice silence in some of their meetings. That would actually give a place for God to break in. And who knows, He might have something to say even to a committee meeting, if they would be silent long enough." Dallas Willard, Be Still DVD, "Contemplative Prayer: The Divine Romance Between God and Man"

"First, you must remember that when you go into solitude and silence, your basic goal is to do nothing. Yes, nothing!"--J.P. Moreland, "How Spiritual Disciplines Work: Solitude and Silence as Spiritual Disciplines"

"It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we all are called."--Henri Nouwen, Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, p. 66.

"God's first language is silence." Thomas Keating, Intimacy with God, p. 153.

ANTHONY DEMELLO EXPLAINS HOW TO GO INTO THIS SILENCE THAT SO MANY TALK ABOUT--WITH THE MANTRA:

To silence the mind is an extremely difficult task. How hard it is to keep the mind from thinking, thinking, thinking, forever thinking, forever producing thoughts in a never ending stream. Our Hindu masters in India have a saying: one thorn is removed by another. By this they mean that you will be wise to use one thought to rid yourself of all the other thoughts that crowd into your mind. One thought, one image, one phrase or sentence or word that your mind can be made to fasten on. Anthony de Mello, Sadhana: A Way to God (St. Louis, the Institute of Jesuit Resources, 1978), p. 28.

Many of these quotes can be found in Ray Yungen's book, A Time of Departing.

This article is from http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/thesilence.htm