Silence in the Internet Age

There are three degrees of Silence:

• Silence of the mouth

• Silence of the mind

• Silence of the will

To refrain from idle talk is hard, to quiet the gibbering of memory and imagination is much harder; and even hardest is to still the voices of craving and aversion within the will.

We live in the Information Age, an enlightened age, which though brings mental noise and the noise of desire.

For all the resources and almost miraculous technology of our Age, Silence is under constant attach and has almost succumbed.

News items, mutually irrelevant bits of information, blasts of sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama, but merely create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas.

And since most Internet content providers support themselves by selling space to advertisers, the noise is carried from our eyes through the realms of fantasy, knowledge and feeling to the ego’s central core of wish and desire.

Spoken or printed advertising has no other purpose than to prevent the will from ever achieving silence.
Desirelessness is the condition of deliverance and illumination.

The condition of an expanding and technologically progressive system of mass production is universal craving.

Advertising is the organized effort to extend and intensify craving.

Craving and desires are intensified by advertising and mind restlessness.

All the saints and teachers of all religions have warned that is the principal cause of suffering and wrong-doing and the greatest obstacle between the human soul and its divine ground is desire.