In 1969, Huberto Rohden went to visit three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa.
For what? In search of the truth? Looking for other kinds of men?
Not! Men are fundamentally the same, everywhere...
But dear reader, do not expect to find in the lines below, something like a tour guide, descriptions of other cultures, panoramic views of countries and peoples that Rohden visited. You will find none of this. He will only say - more to himself than to you - what people have said to him, more for his being than for his saying while travelling through him.
If you have other ideas from these continents and peoples, I accept them as equally true, although they may be different from mine. Diversity of opinion is not hostility. If there was no such diversity, this world would be an unbearable monotony.
Rohden travelled through other civilizations to feel more intensely his unity from within - unity in diversity, is the identity of the different character metaphysically speaking. From this trip through the outside world and his inner world, he wrote a book in Portuguese whose first edition was published in 1971, a book that transports the reader to the most ancient times of past civilizations and at the same time at the heart of the ideas of Rohden, this great 20th-century thinker.
“...As I travelled the worlds, I gave orders to the worlds to travel through me, to show me the same man already known, but in different perspectives.
Never man knows himself as well as when he receives the impact of other men. The metaphysics of the different character of others catalyze and intensifies our inner identity. Our self-knowledge crystallizes.
Of all the people I met - what could they say to me again?
Christian religions of various shades, Hebrew beliefs and Mohammedan cults, hermetic philosophies, Hellenic mysteries, Brahmin metaphysics and Buddhist mystics; temples, churches, mosques, pagodas, synagogues - nothing new was said to me, however, they made me more aware of what I already was and knew.
In these mirrors, I saw what I could not see without a mirror: my countenance reflected in them, the attitude of my soul, the character of my Self.
In Beirut, I decided to spend a whole day in the solitude of the rocky mountains of Lebanon where natural caves were formed as if they were rustic dwellings.
I got up early and prepared for this pilgrimage. I took with me, a bottle of water, bread and grapes. I chose the rock and climbed slowly, through a world of thorns, jumping from stone to stone until I reached the highest rock and found a cave; then I isolated myself from the world, spending twelve hours alone, with myself and God, standing, sitting, lying, in the deepest loneliness, interrupted only by the sizzling of cicadas and singing of birds.
At that time, these rocks seemed to be the only worthy place to enter into communion with God. There was not the slightest trace of human civilization… No tourist had ever desecrated these nature sanctuaries. The auras were virgin and pure, as in the days of Genesis.
Silence and solitude are powerful spiritual catalysts. They are also conditions that purify all ego’s impurities. The ego lives in noise and for the noise - and dies in silence. When the man-ego lacks his beloved daily noises, he slowly begins to agonize, and, if he does not find noisy areas, he ends up dying, asphyxiated like fish out of water… And, after the death of the ego, the divine Self is born, who loves silence as God, who is eternal and infinite Silence.
How to make cloudy water clear? Leaving it alone, steady.
All noises, both physical and mental, are impurity and profanity - whereas silence and stillness are purity and sacredness.
After some time of continuous silence and meditation, the soul enters into a great spiritual receptivity, so that any little seed of truth sprouts with spontaneous ease. Joel Goldsmith, in his book “The Art of Spiritual Healing”, mentions silence as a preparatory condition to cure illnesses of all kinds. It seems that there is even silence therapy. It is not, of course, the simple objective fact of silence, but a subjective attitude of being silent, in stillness. It is silence-presence, not silence-absence. From silence-plenitude, and not from silence-emptiness.
Usually, people talk, talk, talk, but without saying anything, in pure unnecessary conversations. Talking to them seems like an itch on the tongue, which to be relieved, needs to speak, speak, speak; the same happens when someone starts to scratch, more itches appear.
Talking is the best way to not have thoughts or not grow and develop a single decent thought. He who talks a lot thinks little. It is as if someone constantly shovels the ground, scraps it, and cuts off any little plant they might want to sprout. Nothing will have time to sprout and grow.
Talking chases away thought - thinking chases away intuition.
Only those who are silenced verbally and mentally, but remain fully alert, will receive intuition, inspiration, revelation.
When a man gets used to silence, he enters the “communion of saints” and finds that the entire Universe is a populated desert, a sound emptiness…
When someone asked the great Heraclitus of Ephesus what he had learned in so many decades of philosophy, he replied: “I learned to speak to myself”. That is, to speak without words, in spirit and truth.
How many times, walking through the noisy streets of any city, accompanied by someone, if I walk in silence for a minute or two, ask me if I am angry; if I spend five minutes in silence, ask if I'm sick, and even be willing to take me to the doctor.
This is the strange philosophy of the man-ego; for him, speaking is health, silence is a disease. God who is infinite silence, must be sick!
The art of being quiet dynamically is so great that no man-ego learns it.
Those who have never delved deeply into the silence-plenitude can only speak vacuities, perhaps brilliant vacuities, like soap bubbles.
When a man speaks, God is silent.
When a man is silent, God speaks.
To be silent means to plunge into the Infinite, the Eternal, the immense Ocean of Reality, of Divinity. Only when a man is immersed in God, is he silent, full of spirituality. The non-spiritual man is superficial, floating on the surface of the ego's illusory things…
In the late afternoon, I left my cave and went down the mountain and a vehicle took me back to Bikfaia to the hotel where I was staying. I felt light, pure, ethereal, and I had no desire to leave the divine peace of that cave, to return to the streets full of human noises!”
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