Six months after coming back from India he told his followers: Once you have had a taste of the gifts this silence brings, you will understand it. Silence is not simply a question of not fidgeting, not moving things about; it is a question of putting a stop to all discontent, to all the vague emotions that drift through one.

The first degree of silence is physical. It is necessary to attain that silence before one can go higher and pacify one’s astral feelings. The second degree of silence, then, is the pacification of feelings; the third is the pacification of thought.

In this total peace, the spirit can bring back joy, health and wisdom
When this silence is achieved, the spirit is free to move about and visit regions it has never seen before. In this total peace the spirit can soar aloft and bring back with it joy, health, fortitude and love. It can bring wisdom to our minds, so that our intelligence enables us to understand everything.

At the Bonfin and Izgrev he continued to insist on the need for real silence during meals, the kind of silence that makes it possible to assimilate one’s food consciously and to practice the yoga of nutrition so as to extract its subtlest and most potent elements and thus improve one’s physical and psychic health.

Gestures to harmonise the solar plexus
On January 8, 1962, he said: Help to calm your solar plexus with some consciously harmonious gestures. During meals you often see me quietly moving something on the table for no apparent reason. These small gestures do me good; they harmonize my solar plexus and draw in strength. They benefit you too. Whenever you are in a painful state inwardly, make some harmonious gesture. For example you can draw the form of a circle in the air at the level of your head and upper body.

The magic of love around the fire at the feast of Archangel Mikhaël
But each year at the close of the summer convention, gathered with his disciples round the fire in honour of the Archangel Mikhaël, it was the magic of love that triumphed. The ambience created by their spiritual aspirations and desire for perfection was so irresistible that the Master was caught up in the current and all his resolutions of severity were swept away. His love overcame all else.

Extracts from the Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov Biography, by Louise-Marie Frenette,
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