“To be capable of silence, stillness, illuminated passivity is to be fit for immortality —amr.tatv ¯aya kalpate.

It is to be dh¯ıra, the ideal of our ancient civilisation, which does not mean to be tamasic, inert and a block. The inaction of the tamasic man is a stumbling-block to the energies around him, the inaction of the Yogin creates, preserves and destroys; his action is dynamic with the direct, stupendous driving-power of great natural forces. It is a stillness within often covered by a ripple of talk and activity without,—the oceanwith its lively surface of waves. But even as men do not see the reality of God’s workings from the superficial noise of the world and its passing events, for they are hidden beneath that cover, so also shall they fail to understand the action of the Yogin, for he is different within from what he is outside.

The strength of noise and activity is, doubtless, great,—did not the walls of Jericho fall by the force of noise? But infinite is the strength of the stillness and the silence, in which great forces prepare for action.”

– Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga p s9