Aldous Huxley wrote, “The 20th century is the Age of Noise. Physical noise, mental noise and noise of desire...All the resources of our almost miraculous technology have been thrown into the current assault against silence...Spoken or printed, all advertising copy has but one purpose – to prevent the will from ever achieving silence. Desirelessness is the condition of deliverance and illumination. The conditioning of an expanding and technologically progressive system of mass production is universal craving”.

I recently came across the above passage in The Perennial Philosophy which Huxley wrote in 1945, before I myself was born. Although I had not previously read his book, this passage pretty much summed up my own feelings and insights, which I have been expressing more vociferously over the last decade. With the advent of the personal screen in the mid 1950s , first primitive TVs, then computers, smart phones, video games, social networking etc., the Noise has become ever more amplified along with ever more manipulative marketing and its consequent mega-consumerism. Huxley’s amazing insight/ foresight should not be surprising since his (1932) Brave New World is a modern classic and still as relevant as ever.

Why do we avoid silence (which includes doing nothing) seemingly at all costs? The Ageless Wisdom or Perennial Philosophy explanation would probably be something along the lines of ....We have made the fundamental mistake of thinking of ourselves solely as separate, finite beings, identifying with our body, thoughts, memories, social roles, relationships etc. We are not aware that at the same time, we are part of the timeless, divine Reality or God. God is both transcendent (beyond us) and Immanent (within us). Our individual “I” does not want to let go of control because that would be the Unknown, the equivalent of death. Silence, Emptiness, the Unknown is beyond the busyness of the self, which is preoccupied with projecting itself from past to future.

As the busyness, noise and stress increase in our lives, we become more alienated from ourselves and make desperate efforts to “be somebody”, perhaps live the “American Dream” or even just Warhol’s predicted “15 Minutes of Fame”. Studies show that desperation and narcissism are steadily increasing.

Ironically, our real self is part of the Divine, which we shunning, through our refusal of let go of what Huxley calls our “selfness”. Many of the qualities we consciously or subconsciously seek including relationship, interconnectedness and love are to be found within...in the silence and emptiness which is part of our intrinsic nature. If we are always broadcasting, we cannot receive.