Is Silence Negative Or Empty, Asks Osho

Silence Of The Heart !

Silence usually is understood to be something negative, something empty, an absence of sound, of noises. This misunderstanding is prevalent because few people have never experienced silence - all they have experienced is noiselessness. But silence is a totally different phenomenon. It is utterly positive. It is existential, it is not empty. It overflows with a music that you have never heard before, with a fragrance that is unfamiliar to you, with a light that can only be seen by inner eyes. It is not something fictitious; it is a reality that is already present in everyone - we just never look in.
All our senses are extrovert. Our eyes open outside as do our ears; our hands move outside, so too, our legs. All our senses are meant to explore the outside world. But there is a sixth sense which is asleep because we have never used it. And no society, culture or educational system helps people to make the sixth sense active. In the East, the sixth sense is called "the third eye". It looks inward. And just as there is a way of looking in, so there is a way of hearing in, and of smelling the fragrance within.
Just as there are five senses moving outward, there are five counter-senses moving inward. In all, we have ten senses, but the first sense that starts the inner journey is the third eye, and then other senses start opening up. Your inner world has its own taste, fragrance and light. It is utterly, immensely, eternally silent. The mind cannot reach there, but you can reach because you are not the mind. The function of the mind is to be a bridge between you and the objective world, and the function of the heart is to be a bridge between you and yourself.
The silence is the silence of the heart. It is a wordless song without sound. Out of this silence flowers of love grow. Here you can find the Garden of Eden. Meditation is the key to open the doors of your own being. The body knows its own silence - that is its own well-being, overflowing health and joy. The mind also knows its silence, when all thoughts disappear and the sky is cloud-free, just pure space. But the silence I am talking about is far deeper. I am talking about the silence of your being. Other silences can be disturbed.
Sickness can disturb the silence of your body, and death is certainly going to disturb it. A single thought can disturb the silence of your mind, the way a small pebble thrown into a silent lake creates thousands of ripples, and the lake is no longer silent. The silence of body and mind are fragile and superficial, but in themselves they are good. To experience them is helpful, because it indicates that there may be deeper silences of the heart. And the day you experience the silence of the heart, it will be again an arrow of longing, moving you even deeper.