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Impressions from within the room where St. Theresa of Avila was born in Avila, Spain.

I

In some unplanned moments in human history a sudden strange surge of silences becomes enfleshed. The people call it a “saint.” The enfleshment ends but silence continues so that many pilgrims may journey to immerse themselves in the pools left in the chambers where silence was thus “born” and had a dwelling.

Impelled, uninvoked, from the depths of some unknown ocean, the high tide of an irrepressible urge to silence comes welling up to sweep at the shores of some open-stretched-out minds, and leaves its overwhelming imprint of a quiet power behind.

The pools thus formed, the minds thus empowered, are thereafter revered as saints. The footprints of the saints too, on the beaches of history, form indelible pools of tranquility to remain forever as places where pilgrims from all polarities of the globe come penitent, praying for purity at these spots magnetized by sanctity where needles of many traditions converge.

II

Have you ever visited one of the birth places of Silence in any one of Her incarnations? This was one: where Silence and Her twin brother Love were born.

Silence is the twin sister of saints.

If you are not set that saints come dwell in your skull, you can for now keep company with their sister, Silence.

To enter where a saint was born is to be baptised in an invisible pool of the force of freedom named silence.

In an age where bodies of saints are no longer martyred but the sacred thoughts suffer cruelest inquisitions, one can find asylum in such a chamber.

III

The room where St. Teresa was born: the silence during prayer to Mother in that particular center of interior worlds was like that of a pool of water that had lain undisturbed for (the Cavemaker alone knows) how many millenia, like the mind of a yogi, that I saw the reflection of my face in, in the depth of Carlsbad caves.

The silence rained so thick, my soul was soaked through and through and the tongue turned so heavy it forgot its functions both of taste and speech.

IV

In the chambers in which those fully grown in Spirit are born are to be found pools of holy water deeper than an ocean. The infants in Spirit, if they dare a reverent dive, emerge a moment later fully grown in splendour.

The splendour will last forever if a single drop from the holy pool clings to a corner of their minds.

V

A chamber where a saint is born is a crystal chalice filled with the milk of silence placed in the full moon light of agape and apotheosis.

Some sip reverently; some gulp hurriedly; some, alas, pass by with eyes averted. Blessed are the few who will be bathed with this Mother milk, that is the mead of sanctity that is wine of starlight that is the river of rays whose origin is the palm of God.

To sit silently in a chamber where a saint was born is to become foetus in the womb of God.