silence is more effective than speech

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Day by Day with Bhagavan________21-11-45 MorningThe Swami was asking Bhagavan about the characteristicsof a jnani. Bhagavan said they are all described in books, such asthe Bhagavad Gita, but that we must bear in mind that the jnani'sstate being one which transcends the mind, cannot be describedwith the help merely of the mind and that all description thereforemust be defective. Only silence can correctly describe their stateor characteristics. But silence is more effective than speech. Fromsilence came thought, from thought the ego and from the egospeech. So if speech is effective, how much more effective mustits original source be? In this connection Bhagavan related thefollowing story: "Tattvaraya composed a bharani (a kind of poeticcomposition in Tamil) in honour of his Guru Swarupananda andconvened an assembly of learned pandits to hear the work andassess its value. The pandits raised the objection that a bharaniwas only composed in honour of great heroes capable of killinga thousand elephants, and that it was not in order to composesuch a work in honour of an ascetic. Thereupon the author said,`Let us all go to my Guru and we shall have this matter settledthere'. They went to the Guru and, after all had taken their seats,the author told his Guru the purpose of their coming there. TheGuru sat silent and all the others also remained in mauna. Thewhole day passed, night came, and some more days and nights,and yet all sat there silently, no thought at all occurring to any ofthem and nobody thinking or asking why they had come there.After three or four days like this, the Guru moved his mind a bit,and thereupon the assembly regained their thought activity. Theythen declared, "Conquering a thousand elephants is nothing besidethis Guru's power to conquer the rutting elephants of all our egosput together. So certainly he deserves the bharani in his honour!"