Do not oppose a great force.

Retreat until it weakens, then advance with resolution.

You will make your conflicts disappear when you understand them in their ultimate root...

...not when you want to resolve them.

Should your influence reach an entire people take great care to overcome your own contradiction...

...so as not to poison with it the air that all others must breathe. You will be responsible for yourself and for all those you gather around you. Thus, if your mission is to humanize the earth, strengthen your hands, hands of a noble laborer.

The chain of actions set in motion in life cannot be stopped by death.

How profound it is to meditate on this truth, even though we may not completely comprehend the transformation of one action into another!

When you force something toward an end...

...you produce the contrary.

Illustration by Rafa Edwards 

(www.rafaeledwards.com)

To go against the evolution of things...

... is to go against yourself.

Illustration by Rafa Edwards 

(see www.rafaeledwards.com)

Different is the attitude toward life and things when inner revelation strikes like lightning.

 Illustration by Rafa Edwards (see www.rafaeledwards.com) 

Following the steps slowly, meditating on what has been said and what has yet to be said, you may convert the non-meaning into meaning. It is not indifferent what you do with your life. Your life, subject to laws, is open to possibilities among which you can choose. I do not speak to you of liberty. I speak to you of liberation, of movement, of process. I do not speak to you of liberty as something static, but of liberating yourself step-by-step, as those who approach their city become liberated from the road already traveled. Thus, “what one must do” depends not upon distant, incomprehensible, and conventional morals, but upon laws: laws of life, of light, of evolution.

Every time the human consciousness has managed to glimpse the profundity of the Mind...

...inspired answers have arisen and great forces have been released. The rapture of falling in love, the inspiration of artists, and the ecstasy of mystics, all have their source in those common depths.

Whenever you find great strength, joy and kindness in your heart...

or when you feel free and without contradictions, immediately be internally thankful.

Without inner faith, there is fear...

...fear produces suffering; suffering produces violence; violence produces destruction. Therefore, inner faith prevents destruction.

"All human beings have the right to ask themselves about...

 the meaning of life, about love, about friendship..."

"The crises that now beset us and are still to come in the near future...

...will serve, despite their misfortunes, to surpass this final stage of human prehistory... and each person will know whether or not they decide to accompany this change; and each person will comprehend whether or not they seek a profound renewal in their own life."

Individuals do not exist in isolation...

Thus, if they truly give their lives direction, this will change their relationships with the people in their families, their workplaces, and everywhere they carry out their activities. Giving direction to one's life is not simply a psychological problem that can be resolved within the head of an isolated individual; on the contrary, it is resolved by changing—through coherent behavior—the situation in which one lives with others.

All human beings have the right to ask themselves about the meaning of life...

...about love, about friendship, about all those things that make up the poetry and the greatness of human existence.

Nonviolence and Spirituality: An Experience

Sunday 19/6/11
2-4 pm

 HAVERSTOCK SCHOOL 

24  Haverstock Hill, Chalk Farm, London, NW3 2BQ

 

Introducing Silo's Message

 

 

It did not strike me as strange to find a devotion to the Sun-god among various ancient peoples...

...and I understood that while some worshipped this heavenly object because it gave life to the earth and to nature, others recognized in that majestic body the symbol of a greater reality.

For us the search for the profound is a path of ascent toward the sacred...

...that opens in our interior in the measure that we overcome our anxieties, our contradictions, and our fears, and help others move in the same direction.

There is no meaning in life...

...if everything ends in death.

Any morality, any law, or any social constitution...

...that begins from principles supposedly superior to human life places that life in a situation of contingency, denying its essential meaning of liberty.

Do not imagine that you are alone...

...in your village, in your city, on the Earth, or among the infinite worlds.

Every time the human consciousness has managed to glimpse the profundity of the Mind...

...inspired answers have arisen and great forces have been released. The rapture of falling in love, the inspiration of artists, and the ecstasy of mystics, all have their source in those common depths. The great religious and spiritual currents that have manifested throughout history were also born from these “sacred” experiences.

“Day of Testimony”

... we take the opportunity to send our warmest greetings to our very dear friends who, in different latitudes, in the halls in the parks of study and reflection, neighbourhood halls and meeting places are commemorating once again the anniversary of what took place on May 4th, 1969. From this magnificent place we should consecrate this movable day so that in the future it will be remembered as the “Day of Testimony” that gives priority to this human attitude and that justifies it in itself and places it above all ideologies, all theories and all practical calculations. This point of view, according to which what comes first is the expression of human life with its certainties, its doubts, its attempts, its rebellions, and which raises up those who have their feet on the earth and their head in the heavens.

Silo - 6th May, 2006.
Manantiales Park of Study & Reflection, Chile.

Punta de Vacas, Mendoza, Argentina, May 4, 1969 - The Healing of Suffering

At the time Silo gave this speech in 1969, the military dictatorship then in power in Argentina had banned all public gatherings in urban areas. Consequently, a bleak spot known as Punta de Vacas, high in the Andes on the border between Argentina and Chile, was chosen as the location for the speech. Early in the morning of May 4, the authorities placed roadblocks on all roads leading to the site. Machine-gun posts, military vehicles, and armed soldiers were stationed along the roads, and everyone was required to show identification papers to pass through the checkpoints, which led to disputes with some members of the international press.


Against the magnificent backdrop of the snow-capped Andes, Silo began to speak to an audience of some two hundred people. The day was cold and bright, and by noon the event was over.


(for full text of Silo's speech see right hand side panel).

In your internal landscape there is an ideal man or woman...

...that you search for in the external landscape. Through so many relationships your ideal remains always just out of reach—like two fragments of flint that do not quite strike except for that brief moment when perfect love dazzles us with its spark.

Gazing at this flower...

... you and I may agree on many things. But if you go on to say that this flower will bring you utmost happiness, it may become more difficult for me to comprehend, for you are speaking no longer of the flower but instead of what you believe it will do within you. You speak of an internal landscape that perhaps does not coincide with mine.

...wherein does the difference lie?

For some this scene revives a gentle and perhaps pleasant nostalgia. For others it awakens dreams, and for still others, promises to be fulfilled in radiant days to come. Before the same sea one person becomes anguished, while another, inspired, feels exhilarated. And a thousand more are overawed in contemplation of those frozen crags, while still others gaze in admiration at those crystals carved on such gigantic scale. Some are depressed, others uplifted before the same landscape. A single landscape, then, may be very different for two people, but wherein does the difference lie?

We are at the end of a dark period in history

and nothing will ever be the same as before. Little by little, the dawning of a new day will come. Cultures will begin to understand one another; the peoples will experience a growing yearning for progress for all, understanding that progress for the few ends up being progress for no one. Yes, there will be peace, and out of necessity it will be understood that the outline of a universal human nation is taking shape.

open roads

...and what of work, money, love, death, and the many other aspects of the human landscape barely touched on in these commentaries? Certainly there is much more to say for anyone who wishes to, as long as it is done bearing in mind this way of approaching the issues: referring looks to landscapes and understanding that landscapes change looks.

If someone is interested in these ideas and the way we have spoken about them up to now, they can speak in the same way that we would.

We ride on the wings of a bird...

...named Intent, that soars above frustration, weakness and pettiness. The force that gives life to our flight is faith in our destiny, it is faith in the justice of our action, it is faith in ourselves, it is faith in the human being.

Since ancient times...

...we human beings have perceived the trajectory of our life and its finiteness. We ask ourselves where we've come from and where we are going, and we experience the search for meaning, while also feeling the need to overcome pain and suffering.

Since ancient times...

...there have existed procedures capable of carrying people to exceptional states of consciousness in which the greatest mental amplitude and inspiration is juxtaposed with the dulling of the normal faculties. As the importance of these phenomena began to be understood, explanations and techniques were perfected with the intention of giving direction to processes that, in principle, were uncontrolled. Throughout history, in diverse cultures (frequently in the shadow of religions), mystical schools developed that practiced their particular ways of accessing the Profound.

After many days...

...coming from the darkest of darkness, I arrived at the light, guided not by teachings but by meditation.

Depending on...

... whether our energy acts more internally or superficially in the body, the states of deep sleep, semi-sleep, or wakefulness arise. Surely, the halos that surround the bodies or heads of the saints (or the great awakened ones) in religious paintings allude to this phenomenon of the energy, which on occasion, manifests more externally.

at times...

... I have grasped a distant thought.

On this planet of ours...

... in which societies are rapidly becoming globalized, it will be precisely a renewed experience of contact with the transcendent which could foster a recognition and spiritual encounter between the peoples of the world.

The search for the profound...

... is a path of ascent toward the sacred that opens in our interior in the measure that we overcome our anxieties, our contradictions, and our fears, and help others move in the same direction.

“Do not imagine...

...that you are enchained to this time and this space.”

At times...

...a perfect communion with everything has filled me with ecstasy.

At times...

...I have broken through my reveries and seen reality in a new way.