Six weeks after my brother's death, the night came for Dad to die. The doctor came in telling us he could do nothing for him. And then, with a gasp, Dad took his last breath. The air was still and yet there was a Presence larger than life as Dad left his body. The Presence was palpable and real, yet unseen. I did not trust this, yet I knew it to be true. "It feels like a birth," my sisters said... Years later, I was sitting at my desk. Suddenly, I heard a voice, my father's voice. There was no one physically there. And yet, I heard my father speaking to me. "Bobby and I are together now. We are doing fine. We're with you more than you think."
True experience always comes about in withdrawal "from the crowd." The original, true and proper attitude of the mind is, as Heraclites says, that of "listening to the truth of things..." Our journey into the territory of being should be made in silence, with wondering, wide-open eyes. The fullness of truth and reality is revealed only to those who attain to a silence which covers every aspect of their beings, or who, in other words make their basic attitude toward the whole of being one of delicate and reserved courtesy... For anyone who wishes to hear what is true and real, every voice must for once be still. Silence, however, is not merely the absence of speech. It is not something negative; it is "something" in itself. It is a depth, a fullness, a peaceful flow of hidden life. Everything true and great grows in silence. Without silence we fall short of reality and cannot plumb the depths of being. Kierkegaard, who was acutely aware of this, once made the profoundly true statement: "Silences are the only scrap of Christianity we still have left."