February 14, 2026
ahamasmi jagatyasmin svasti śabdārthamātrakaṁ
sattāsāmānyameveti sauṣuptaṁ maunamucyate (26)
VASIṢṬHA continued:
O Rāma, remain for ever firmly established in that state of utter freedom from movement of thought, resorting to the silence of deep sleep.
RĀMA said:
Sir, I have heard of silence of speech, silence of the eyes and other senses and I have also heard of the rigid silence of extreme asceticism. But what is this silence of deep sleep?
VASIṢṬHA replied:
Rāma, there are two types of muni (a sage who observes mouna or silence). One is the rigid ascetic and the other the liberated sage. The former forcibly restrains his senses and engages himself in dry (devoid of wisdom) kriyās (activities) with fanaticism. The liberated sage, on the other hand, knows what is what (the truth as truth and the unreal as unreal), he is endowed with self-knowledge and yet he behaves as any ordinary person here. What is regarded as silence or mouna is based on the nature and the behaviour of these munis.
Four types of silence have been described: (1) silence of speech, (2) silence of the senses (eyes, etc.), (3) violent restraint, as also (4) the silence of deep sleep. There is another known as silence of the mind. However, that is possible only in one who is dead or one who practises the rigid mouna (kāṣṭha mouna) or the silence of deep sleep (suṣupti mouna). Of these the first three involve elements of the rigid mouna. It is the fourth that is really conducive to liberation. Hence, even at the risk of incurring the displeasure of those who resort to the first three types of mouna, I say that there is nothing in those three which is desirable.
The silence of deep sleep is conducive to liberation. In it the prāṇa or life-force is neither restrained nor promoted, the senses are neither fed nor starved, the perception of diversity is neither expressed nor suppressed, the mind is neither mind nor non-mind. There is no division and hence no effort at abolishing it; it is called the silence of deep sleep and one who is established in it may or may not meditate. There is knowledge of what is as it is and there is freedom from doubt. It is utter emptiness. It is supportlless. It is of the nature of supreme peace of which it can neither be said that it is real nor that it is unreal. That state in which one knows “There is no ‘I’, nor another, no mind nor anything derived from the mind”, in which one knows “‘I’ is but an idea in this universe, and it is really pure existence” – that is known as the silence of deep sleep. In that pure existence which is infinite consciousness where is “I” or “another”?