Silence, A Cosmic Romance
A Sermon from The Bhakti Math Guru—Transmitted September 21, 2025
Life is a cosmic romance. And we can feel that in silence. To fall in love with existence, to listen to the reverberating expanse of the world, to rejoice in the moment and its majesty, all happens within the field of silence. Silence is listening, for as long as one is occupied in the activity of thought, they cannot hear what is beyond. The more quiet the world gets, the more quiet oneself gets, the more they can hear the subtle. Silence opens the subtle dimensions, the tints of existence, waiting to be beheld within each and every moment.
In silence, the subtle faculties of consciousness awaken. One can literally feel what heretofore they may not have noticed. The subtle is not quiet, it is profound, and yet it can only be heard when the mind is silent. It’s a cosmic romance, available to the one who would listen, and it’s profoundly beautiful.
To be silent is both a choice and a cultivation. In each moment, we can choose silence, and with each subsequent choice of silence, we get better at being silent; our silence deepens. How far does silence go, and what depth of profundity can we discover? But the choice is always available to us. To choose silence is to choose that first step up the mountain. The summit may be near or far, but with each step you are on the journey to that summit; you are on the way to your beloved. And that makes each step, whether at the base or the peak, a joy unto itself.
In silence, we gain a variety of dimensions of genius. It is through silence that we can apprehend truth. The truth of what is both within and without can be seen only when the mind is quiet enough to perceive the subtle. Truth reveals within the seemingly complex a profoundly simple nature. To see the truth is to see what is in its simplicity; it is to see with the wisdom of a child, with the silence of a child. The truth is one, for it is that actuality beyond the noise of interpretation, like and dislike, opinion and judgment, agenda and desire, fear and aversion. It is simply what is without the interference of selfhood.
To know the truth is of the utmost importance. For in knowing the truth, we know the way, we know what is right, and we know what step to take, the truth is the means through which we direct our energies, it is the power to act correctly, that understanding, that perception which we call truth instigates correct action, divine action, the actions of love. But it is only through silence that we can know this truth, and it is only through this truth that we act correctly. In truth, we no longer have to guess, and our actions become choiceless and spontaneous. Truth is the absence of illusion, it is the absence of the noise, it is the result of silence.
Silence is the cessation of escaping; escaping itself is the escape from silence. The mechanisms of self must wither in the fire of the moment. The escaping must stop, and one must stand vulnerable to that cosmic romance. Escape happens in a variety of ways when one feels the need to keep busy, in particular through the senses or through thought. Indulgence of every kind—in food, in thinking, in passive entertainment, even in the higher forms—can be recognized as escaping if one is not free.
The ability to enter into silence is an expression of one’s freedom. Freedom from the self and its attachments, freedom from the mechanisms of thought and its perpetuation. Freedom from the resistance to silence. One must, little by little, chip away at the sedimentation of escape that has encrusted their jewel of silence.
The formations of activity that constitute this noise will resist, for in their negation, they are no more. They want to continue. It is their nature. Silence is the ending of the self and its concerns, the beginning of the moment and its truth. Silence is a revelation that happens when the beauty of the moment becomes uneclipsed by those sedimentations of the self. And it is the little self, which is illusory—all those perturbations in the perfect perfection of silence—that comes to an end and reveals the deep self, the true self. It is like the ripples on the surface of a pond because of a breeze distorting and obscuring the perfect moon in their reflection. The moon is real; the ripples are merely perturbations.
And so there is the illusory self and the actual self. It is the actual self which is the cosmos. It is the actual self which is that romance. And it is a recognition that when all is given up, when one is completely free, when we become liberated, emancipated in that emancipating silence, that we are so whole and complete that bliss, joy, love, contentment are our very nature. It is the negation of the self in the practice of silence that reveals this innate beauty.
There are many opportunities to be silent. One can be silent with others on a drive home, listening to the breeze and seeing the lights twinkle on the water. One can be silent while eating with one another, connecting with each other through that silence. To hold hands in silence is to stand in the majesty of the universe. It is to share in that beauty. For without silence, we miss it. It is like going to a great cosmic display and watching it together and connecting through that depth of experience, that depth of presence, that depth of dissolution that we come to know each other. For this silence is ourselves, and in silence, we come to experience not only ourselves, but also the other, and we find that they are one, and they merge in an indiscrimination of separation. We cannot know the other by asking what they did or what they didn’t do. We can interface with the stories that we carry with us from the past, we can interface with the projections of the future that we create in the present, we can interface with each other based on our identifications, our self-ideations, but all of these are a mirage on the surface of the self. Phantasms with little existence. For as soon as we stop thinking, they all cease to be. And what remains is the true self; what remains is the silence. What remains is the cosmic romance.
To truly know another is to know them not through their conceptions of self, to know them not through the image you have of them, but to know them as a child of the universe—the innocent child beyond accumulation, that part of us which is naked in our nothingness, majestic in our everythingness, and one in our indifferentiation.
You can practice silence alone; while eating. You can listen—listen to the dimensions of your food: the textures, the colors, the tastes, the way the body responds. You can walk with silence and notice every footstep. In silence, we can cultivate awareness and attention. We learn to listen to things that we miss. Silence is one of the most valuable things in the universe, and it exists with abundance, always available, completely ubiquitous.
In silence, we learn to not only become aware of those subtle dimensions of sensory experience, but also the metaphysical dimensions of energy and the psychic dimensions of intentionality and quality. Without silence, we cannot practice the super-senses of the superhuman side innate to all of us. The one who is silent is in a constant state of cultivation—not necessarily through effort, and certainly not through ego or becoming, but through a genuine love of the apprehension of more and the apprehension of deeper.
In silence, we discover the richness beyond the mundane. And we come to realize an important truth: all of which we experience in the mundane is filtered through our capacity for silence. The best vacation can only be known in proportion to the depth of our silence. The most romantic encounter with a man or a woman can only be known in direct proportion to our capacity for silence. All the wealth and all the health in the world can only be experienced and acknowledged by the one who can listen to its blessings.
Silence and gratitude go together, where gratitude is the knowledge and acknowledgment of the blessings in life; silence is the means by which that acknowledgment occurs. So one can chase all kinds of circumstantial formations, but unless they go deeper and become richness itself within, and cultivate the depths of silence within, they can never know the true extent of these transient formations and blessings.
It is only in silence that we can bring together the whole, not the part. Silence awakens intelligence. The epiphanies of insight are quantum leaps; they don’t happen through a modification on the spectrum of continuity. They are insights that happen spontaneously in the dimensions of silence. Silence makes that who is silent a channel for the divine genius.
A noisy mind moves in the part. A silent mind draws from all the aspects of the whole and acts with unity. Silence awakens intelligence for the musician and the mathematician, the scientist and the dancer, the artist and the businessman. For in silence, we can hear the subtle intimations of the heart, the subtle intimations of the gestalt, the subtle intimations of the divine movement of the universe.
Silence is merging into the dharma.
We live in a world that does not understand silence, does not value it, and does not know it very well. One must insulate themselves against the world to open up that dimension of silence. We can do this by limiting exposure to technology and information channels. We can do this by spending time in nature and time alone. We can do this by taking a weekly sabbatical, observing the Sabbath, Shabbat—all of which mean none other than silence, merging with the Beyond.
Spiritual practice is the cultivation of silence through a variety of means, one of which is to live an uncluttered life. One learns to streamline their life so that the subtle silence can move forward into the foreground. The practice of Zen in particular is the cultivation of the simplicity that promotes silence. The practice of Bhakti is the cultivation of love and its invitation to silence. In love, we listen; in love we dissolve; in love we negate our attachments; in love we become whole and merge into the eternal. Love is the bliss of being. Bhakti is the path of love, the path of the heart.
When we listen to our heart, we are silent in the mind. We are listening to those subtle informations, those magnetic draws, that knowledge of the totality that the heart knows. So spiritual practice is not only the formal choices for silence, but also the lifestyle cultivation that makes silence deeper, more accessible, more lasting. One becomes supremely still because they know the paramount importance that silence has for their life.
So silence is the cosmic romance, the diadem of spiritual practice, the secret way of joy and happiness.
When will you surrender to the silence?
Perhaps you’re not ready.
But there is one thing that you can always do:
continue to find your way to the place in which you’re ready to consent to silence.
Namaste,
Thank you for reading. If these teachings resonate with you, you’re welcome to explore my other work.
With Love and Gratitude,
Adam Wes
The Bhakti Math Guru