Silence: No Such Thing

We often hear people speak of and write about the experience of silence. It’s one of those words that is used rather loosely and in widely different contexts. To some people silence is a place of peace, to others it’s threatening. We have songs like “The Sound of Silence” and movies like “Silence of the Lambs.”

In no case, however, can we really experience true silence; rather, it’s varying degrees of quietude. By definition, silence is “the absence of sound,” and sound is the ear’s sensation to vibrations in the air. There is always some vibration of the air, even if it’s so small that we can’t hear it. A dog barking several miles away will still send pressure vibrations to us, but the sound level may either be below our threshold of hearing or may be masked by other nearby sources of sound.

Even in the quietest place in the world there are still vibrations in the air (and thus sound). (Now, if I were to stick my head out the window of the Space Station, I’d surely hear no sound, as there is no air. I could then say that I truly know what silence feels like, just before my head exploded.) The quietest place on the planet that we could find ourselves would be an anechoic chamber; it is a thick-walled room that acoustics scientists use to measure very quiet sound sources. It’s extremely disorienting to spend more than a couple of minutes inside one, since it seems to be absolutely silent, and we are used to constant sound, whether loud or subtle.

Even in an anechoic chamber, however (where any airborne vibration level that might exist is just too low to be heard), our ears will pick up subtle vibrations inside our body (blood pulsing, lungs expanding) and interpret them as sound. So let’s speak of degrees of quietude, rather than silence—which is in practice unattainable.

I recently read A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland, in which she described her resolute efforts to find and experience extremely quiet locations. She found that when she became immersed in (near) silence she experienced a kind of sensory depravation that created dramatic psychological and emotional shifts. She wrote that one becomes much more aware of what the mind is doing in such cases—in fact, one is forced to deal with feelings and thoughts that are normally too submerged to get in touch with. It can be scary, it can be exhilarating, it can be transforming. One can come face to face with one’s true nature in such a state of mind, after all the usual surface distractions are stripped away. In fact, this is exactly the state of mind that meditators seek.

I live in a very quiet location in the woods. I moved here partly to get away from the noise and bustle of the city. I came here to touch and enter those very quiet moments that expose me to deeper truths. The more I experience quiet, the more I value and seek it. Silence, however, is a state I’ll never get to—at least not until after I let go this material body.