What one is working on is not the mechanics of the spoken voice, per se, for that is just the vehicle. Instead, it acts as a reinforcement and a calmative remedy to the prattle going on constantly inside one's head. Anyone who has ever taken up meditation, for instance, is often shocked by the non-stop slyness of the thought process. To try and stop that can be a battle, a civil war between the ears. On top of that, talking and thinking are an exhaustive pair, and energy that can be used toward in Spiritual directions is dissipated.
Who is it that makes all this turmoil, even when one has voiced the goal to stop the rolling dialog and, more importantly, why at all?
For me, the best explanation is found in what is known in its Hindu tradition as Advaita Vedanta. Don't get hung-up if that seems a stopping point. The tradition of a vow of silence or the attention to silence in Spiritual work cuts across all barriers we, rather foolishly, have constructed. Christianity, for example, has a rich tradition of silence in their monasteries. Buddhism often points to the same technique. Parts of Hinduism seem to have made it their center point. Or, from the Sufi tradition:
A very devout Persian king was asked by his prime minister, 'You are spending most of the night in meditation and all day long you work. How can that go on?' The Shah said, 'During the night I pursue God; during the day God follows me.' It is the same with silence: he who seeks silence is followed by silence. So it is with all things we wish for; when we seek after them sufficiently, they follow us in time by themselves."To better understand the dynamics, since our thinking minds like anything approaching a schematic drawing explanation, consider this. We are in search of the unchanging, the imperishable, the Real. We start with the idea that if something is Real, the qualities must include unchanging and Present. Things that do change and are temporary are not akin to the Real. Following that path, it should be very obvious that the body, which we pamper and use makeup and cosmetic surgery to prop up over the years is not Real. Put another way, you are not your Body.
Then again, what of Mind? The mind is changing constantly. Things are approved of or diligently sought after one day, but those same thoughts/goals are tossed aside or vanish the next day or the the next hour. Mind, which can also be called ego, is better referred to as "I", the self with a small s. And what are its contents? For the most part, the thoughts are either memories of the past or plans for the future, both of which combine to give the "I" in our life some continuity and realty. I like this. I don't like that. I feel bad. I think. The list of automatic identification goes on and on.
The example often given is of images on a movie screen. On the screen there may be fires or floods, and although the audience buys into the entire thing with rapt attention, there is behind these things a Screen, onto which these images are projected. If you see a pile of gold on the movie screen, you can reach for it and try to grab a handful, but what happens is you hit the screen. Try to scoop up some sand from the movie's beach and the same thing will happen.
So, you are not your mind, although you identify yourself with it constantly.
In this analogy, we are part of the action in life, fighting for this or claiming and grabbing onto that. Yet these things have no more reality than the images that dance on the screen, even if you're watching a costly 3-D movie. Behind those images, though, is the unchanging and unaffected. Behind this life of changing, empty images, says the Hindu tradition, there is something unchanging. The screen, in the analogy, is that which in life is called Brahman.
Absolute Consciousness, the Ultimate Reality or Ultimate Identity are commonly used in referring to Brahman. "The which to which there is no whicher" was how Alan Watts refereed to it. The problem is, all things have name and form, all the parts, but the whole, which is undivided and nondualistic (without opposites) is an entirely different dimension.
So, the next entry, Part 2, will talk more about how all this relates to you. And who you are. Keep in mind, Brahman is more a convention than a name, really. It is like when Lao Tzu in the Tao te Ching said of the Tao (The absolute principle underlying the universe) " The Tao that can be named is not the true Name."
