Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan once told his students the story of a ruler in India, perhaps a Maharajah of one of the princely states, who used to stay awake in the night for prayers and spiritual practices. Someone in the court, concerned for the monarch’s well-being, said, “Majesty, you have so many responsibilities to care for in the day. Would it not be better to take some rest at night?” To which the ruler replied, “You don’t understand. I remember God at night, and He remembers me during the day.”

Whether we keep nighttime vigils or not, there is wisdom hidden in this tale. We may be granted some degree of spiritual intimacy in the night, but we need to feel God remembering us through the day.

The spiritual journey could be described as simply an all-consuming effort to make God a reality. We begin with a concept that we are able to idealise, and by focusing our energy more and more on our ideal, it slowly comes to life, until we sense it around us, and perceive it guiding and protecting us. In time one may come to the state where that Presence is never absent – a blessed condition which could be called ‘God-consciousness.’

But fruit does not ripen in a day, nor does God-consciousness usually manifest all at once. More commonly, we are granted glimpses, brief at first, in our prayers and meditations, beguiling moments of beauty and inspiration that uplift us and encourage us during our devotions. There is certainly a risk that we may develop an inflated opinion of ourselves from these flashes of light, but very quickly the struggles of daily life will show us that we are not made of gold – not yet, anyway. There is still a substantial component of clay. We stumble, we get confused and distracted, we neglect our duties and sometimes we lose our temper. By the end of a busy day, our moments resting in the divine aura seem to have been forgotten.

But if our daily rhythms don’t offer the opportunity to step out of our routines and pray and meditate when our feelings get frayed, there is still a way of allowing the Divine to remember us, as it remembered the Maharajah in the story, and that is by keeping silent. One of the virtues mentioned in the Gathas (Suluk III) is ‘kam sukhun‘ or ‘to be sparing of words.’ To control the impulse to speak is a great step forward on the spiritual path, for it preserves psychic energy that is so often dissipated in pointless speech about matters that have no significance.

When we close our lips, then, it gives our mind energy and clarity, but it also allows us to listen – not outwardly but inwardly. The world is noisy, and if we are unable to guard our consciousness, it will simply echo and even amplify the racket coming from all directions. By controlling our speech, we are able to direct our hearing toward the inner silence, where we may meet again with the One who is remembering us. That is the wisdom we find in these lines at the conclusion of a Raga from the Vadan:
When I called Thee aloud in my distress,
Thou didst not hear my soul’s bitter cry.
Cross-legged I sat in silence;
then alone I heard Thy call.