Material Success and Happiness Through Yoga Principles

by Swami Kriyananda
(J. Donald Walters)

Copyright © 2005 Hansa Trust
All rights reserved.
Lesson Nineteen
Talk Less, Do More
The Principles
A friend of mine, when I sent her the first, unedited version of the last lesson (on advertising), wrote back to say that she imagined me sitting around the table, perhaps at tea time, sharing with friends some of the examples I had come up with. She visualized us all having a merry time together.
The truth was very different. First, I had told no one what I was planning for that chapter. Second, I lay awake in bed late into the night thinking about it and coming up with those examples. Every few minutes I’d get up and write down an idea, or several of them. I don’t think I got to sleep that night until after three o’clock.
Did I enjoy the ideas? Yes, of course I did! My enjoyment, however, was mental, not expressed outwardly.
My point here is that mental work is often very different from the act of speaking to others: It demands a different focus of energy. A wagging tongue takes energy away from the brain and makes deep thinking difficult. Hence the saying, “See that your brain is in gear before putting your tongue in motion.”
I was struck to learn that P. G. Wodehouse, the British humorist, whom I consider the funniest writer who ever lived, was completely inept as a conversationalist. All those brilliantly comical conversations in his books were hatched entirely in his head. When sitting at the dinner table with guests, he often gave them the impression that he was utterly colorless. His example of vocal ineptitude was the most extreme, perhaps, that has ever come to my notice. But then, he wrote books. Perhaps other dull conversationalists that I’ve known were as witty and eloquent as he, at least mentally. Perhaps they were simply not able to express themselves outwardly. I say, perhaps!
I remember a time years ago, when I was arranging the music for my oratorio, “Christ Lives.” I became so immersed in the music that it was, for me, as if no other reality existed. I’d invited a group of friends over to a dinner party before I launched into this project, and had to break my seclusion that evening to attend it. A friend of mine told me later, “You seemed so engrossed in your composing that, when I said something to you, I got the feeling from your answer that you were looking at me as though you were thinking, ‘Now, is she a B-flat?’”
All of the above is relevant to my subject to this extent: The more people talk, the less energy they have, often, for more mental activity. In offices, it would be good to try to keep all conversations to a minimum. I made the suggestion in lesson seventeen that a room be set aside for any arguments that flair up in order not to disturb the rest of the staff. This room, I said, could be used also for relaxed conversation—a necessity from time to time. Without a modicum of such relaxation the strain of work can become over-tiring. I consider such a room important especially for offices in which several people work together. Otherwise, even two people chatting can create a serious distraction for the others. Often, too, everybody gets unnecessarily involved. Long minutes may be required for everyone to settle down and become immersed again in the work.
It can come as quite a revelation to study the amount of time that gets wasted in offices by idle chatting, by unnecessary comments, and by composing clever inter-office memos to one another—all in the name of fun, of course, until the work itself begins to seem like a tea party! I had the job years ago of reorganizing a large office. At one time in the reorganizing process, one of the workers had her job suspended completely for two weeks while I prepared new duties for her. This was a monastery, so the men and women lived separately. That woman’s work, therefore, was where she also lived. She was thus able to work late into every evening; often at eleven o’clock she was still at her desk. It amazed me to learn that, during the period when she had been relieved of her work, she was still at her desk till eleven o’clock every evening! This simple fact demonstrated to me eloquently how much of the “hard work” people do is only habit, and is not really productive.
I cannot stress seriously enough the importance of focused creativity. I want therefore to emphasize again in this chapter people’s need to take occasional breaks from their work. In fact, I recommend that some place be set aside also for silence, where speaking is not allowed: a room to which people can go simply to think things through quietly. I recognize that office space may be at a premium. Please, however, don’t dismiss this idea as permanently impractical. Cooperative effort is often necessary in office work, as it is, obviously, in kitchens and other places where people work physically together. More often, however, the cooperation in an office is less overt. Though it involves group effort, the workers may function singly, each contributing in a more general way toward the common goal.
There is a conflict between the exigencies of work and most people’s incapacity to work with prolonged concentration. I realize that, realistically speaking, few workplaces can have a room set apart for any of the activities I’ve recommended: for occasional chatting, for any arguments that erupt, and for silent thinking. I do hope, however, that employers, encouraged by the ideas I’ve mentioned, will give special thought to the needs of the people they employ, and not only to the needs of the work itself. For, obviously, human beings are not machines to be turned on or off, and expected to run automatically without attention to their feelings. Too many offices, in India perhaps especially, are brown, dull, and poorly lighted, with little or no decor beyond the bare minimum needed to keep people plodding away at uninspiring tasks. I’ve tried in these lessons to set at least a direction. I do say, and I don’t think I am impractical: Please look upon these suggestions as what I’ve said: at least a direction for you to move in. The more the conditions in the workplace inspire your staff to take an interest and to feel dedicated to your aims, the better it will be for everything and everyone.
Meanwhile, there are compromise solutions that may work well for you. I’ve suggested supportive music. Music can help the work in offices, also, where no customers come, but where people need to be kept focused at their desks. One thing is important: If the work is with words, the music played should be instrumental, not vocal. Second, it should be soothing, not restless. I feel awkward in recommending my own instrumental recordings. Still, I use them myself, and find them soothing and relaxing at work. Calming, and perhaps even inspiring music will help to filter out other sounds. So also will recorded environmental sounds, such as flowing brooks, waterfalls, or ocean surf. Recordings of these sounds are available in music stores.
If on the other hand the work people do is not with words, then vocal music need not be obstructive to their work—provided, again, that it is calming. I have the same embarrassment in recommending recordings of my own songs, but in fact they were written to provide uplifting, meaningful thoughts that are easy to understand. They are enjoyable also, and some of them amusing to listen to.
In my early days when I was in SRF, I sometimes visited its Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades, and meditated there on those beautiful grounds. Heavy traffic passed by on Sunset Boulevard, rushing down the long curve around the property on its way down to the Pacific Ocean. There is a sunken garden on the land, with a continuous waterfall. There, I found the traffic noise so obscured that I almost didn’t notice it. The falling water itself, moreover, had a soothing sound. I found meditation there easy. Indeed, it was uplifting even to sit there.
At much less expense than setting aside a room for occasional chatting and relaxation over a cup of coffee, you can place as many dividers as is convenient between the desks, or for separating specifically designated areas. I suggested, earlier, that the color of those dividers be pleasantly neutral: a pale beige, possibly.
Cell phones are a public nuisance nowadays. They must often disrupt the workplace. They are a necessity, I know, but consider the effect of audible conversations on others. One becomes somewhat inured to noise these days—at home, in the streets, in shops, and certainly in offices. Perhaps people imagine they aren’t bothered by it. Maybe they aren’t, in fact, though I’m highly skeptical. Certainly, when one is concentrating deeply it helps to have as little noise around one as possible.
Another way to create silence for oneself is to insert plugs in the ears, or to have silencing headphones. Even the soothing sounds I’ve described above can be played through earphones and can assist concentration in a noisy environment—at least when one isn’t required to talk with others.
The main point of this lesson is to emphasize a little-known fact: There is a close connection between the tongue and the brain. In yoga there is a technique known as Kechari Mudra, in which the tip of the tongue is brought backward in the mouth to touch the uvula, or—better still—brought up behind the nasal passages. Most people find this a difficult practice, and perhaps too strange even to attract them. Considerable mental power, however, can be developed by this practice. Perhaps unfortunately, this lesson is not the place for going deeply into the how-to’s and the why’s of Kechari. The point is, the more one can keep the tongue completely relaxed, the clearer he will find his mind become.
I have been able to take periods of complete seclusion in the mountains—some of them in the Himalayas—and I have found that within a short time my perceptions became so keen that I could feel the thoughts and vibrations of people if I had to be near them. Indeed, it was almost disturbing to have to go down to post letters at the post office, for example in the little village of Lohaghat in the Almora district of the Himalaya, where only one street ran between two rows of little houses.
Sometimes, extreme tests of a truth can help to clarify one’s understanding of it. From those times of seclusion—less frequent than I would have liked, in the busy life my Guru had ordained for me—I have come to cherish complete silence.
Curiously, my Guru told me that in past lives I talked “a lot.” (“Well,” he added, “you were happy in it.”) In this life, I have had to use words “a lot” again, but with focus, now—on writing and lecturing. I wanted to be a hermit, but that was not to be. He may have designated this activity for me in order to work out my own tendency toward verbalizing my insights by stating them as clearly as possible.
There is a reason why spiritual initiations are given, traditionally, in secret with a vow usually added to keep them a secret. It isn’t, as many may suppose, to keep higher truths from general knowledge. No truly wise person wants to hide wisdom from others, if it can uplift them also. Secrecy is, of course, necessary for preserving the sanctity of truth, which must be held in high regard, and not treated as something common. Worldly people have, for example, made a mockery of the sacred concept of “guru.” We hear such expressions these days as “stock market guru,” “real estate guru,” “financial guru.” The list is endless, and makes a travesty of a concept that is holy. No one, not even a spiritual teacher, deserves to be called a guru unless he has achieved deep communion with God. Materialists toss about high concepts like these as though they were playthings. It is well for those concepts to be held sacrosanct.
There is, however, another reason also why initiates are cautioned not to reveal their spiritual practices to others, unless and until they are given permission. When something sacred is spoken aloud to others, the power to succeed in it is diminished. The ramifications of when a truth may be revealed, and to whom, need not concern us here. The important thing is the relevance of this teaching to the workplace.
People love to chatter. A little talk may help them to relieve the tensions built up by too constant mental focus, but too much chatter is detrimental to serious thinking. This principle applies primarily to mental effort, but even in physical labor concentration is a great asset.
Many years ago, in the monastery, we had to do a large cement pour. The job took us, if I recall correctly, twenty-three hours. We stopped rarely, to eat, but because focus was necessary—my own job was to shovel sand into the cement mixer—we kept at it virtually the entire time.
One man in the group grumbled, “I didn’t come here to this ashram to pour cement!” He sat about the whole day, chatting with neighbors and “counseling” them. At the end of the day, only he was tired. The rest of us were filled with joyful energy. Talking, on that occasion, even though the work wasn’t mental, would have been distracting to us.

The Application
Habit may make it difficult for you to keep a resolution to “talk less and do more.” Like most New Year’s resolutions, which often get broken the very first day, you may need a system to help you to be faithful. If so, try coaxing your mind to take only one step at a time. In the case of those “New Year’s” resolutions, make a decision that covers, not the whole year, but just one hour. Keep silence at work, similarly, for one hour only, in the morning at the start of the day. Once that hour has become a habit, extend it to two hours; then to three.
Much work necessitates communication with others. If you are the boss, you can let it be known that you can be reached only at certain hours. When something urgent arises, of course, or when the phone rings, you may have no choice but to adjust personal reality to objective demands. Nevertheless, the sterner you can be with yourself, the more others will come to respect it also.
Mahatma Gandhi made a practice of setting aside one day a week, when he simply wouldn’t speak. Considering that an entire country depended on him, it must have been a challenge for him to keep that resolution. The result was, however, that he accomplished a great deal more than he could have otherwise. He wrote letters, for instance, and composed public statements. People respected his silence, and accommodated themselves to it. It was his firmness in adhering to resolutions like this that gave him the strength to sway millions to his will, and, in the end, to force the British to withdraw from India.
If you are the boss, it would be good to impose silence on everyone for certain periods at a time. You will find, perhaps to your surprise, that when people can keep silence together for any period of time they become less inclined to speak, afterward. Soon, it won’t be as though a dam of silence broke at, let us say, ten or eleven o’clock in the morning! They will enjoy the silence.
I had this experience many years ago, when I lived in the SRF monastery. My Guru had placed me in charge of the monks. One of the things he had asked us to do was keep silence at mealtimes. It hadn’t been convenient for him to eat with us, however. The rule, in consequence, was honored in the breach. Meals had become an opportunity for exuberant chatter. Most of the monks were young. Getting them to keep silence, after years of undiscipline in the dining room, was more than difficult: it was impossible. I tried, but failed.
And then a solution dawned on me: Why not do it by increments? The first thing we did every morning was meditate together. It proved easy, at least at breakfast time (which came afterward), to enforce complete silence. A night in silent sleep, followed by group meditation, somewhat impeded anyway the men’s inclination to chatter. Once they were accustomed to silence at breakfast, it was easier to get them to keep silence in the evenings, after another period of meditation. Still they had the “safety valve” of being able to “talk their heads off” at lunchtime. In time, however, so accustomed did they become to keeping silence at two of the meals, they found themselves somehow out of the habit of speaking during mealtimes at all. I never needed to propose that the silence be extended to lunchtime.
If your response to my first suggestion, that a room be set aside for chatting and another one for silent thinking, was to say, “I can’t afford the extra space,” then look for some other feasible solution. Since you want your work to be successful, you have all the incentive you need to encourage more silence while working. I myself wasn’t in a position to force those monks. I tried simply to win them to a way of life they themselves, in fact, wanted. Surely in your workplace, too, everyone really would like the enterprise to succeed. Win them, rather than driving or harassing them.
The expression, “Hold your tongue,” doesn’t quite do it. Relax your tongue! You’ll be surprised how little you want to speak, once you’ve learned to keep that little muscle in your body still and relaxed!
Meditation
Tense the muscles in your head: the throat, the tongue, the jaw; then quickly relax them. Repeat this exercise several times. Then relax them consciously, more deeply.
Next, concentrate on the energy in those areas where you felt tension. Try to withdraw the energy by visualizing space in your whole head. Withdraw that energy to the medulla oblongata at the back of the head, and then redirect it from there to the point between the eyebrows.
Feel your head surrounded by a bubble of space. Expand that space outward. Let it fill the room where you sit. As you begin enjoying this practice, visualize space expanding in all directions around and beyond you, to the horizon and beyond it; then encompassing the whole world; then spreading beyond our planet to infinity.
Affirmation
“Peace enters me through silence. 
I enjoy stillness in myself, 
when I can listen to Thy silent inner whispers.”

Points to Remember

1. Mental work is very different from the act of speaking to others: It demands a different focus of energy. 
2. The more people talk, the less energy they have, often, for more mental activity. In offices, it would be good to try to keep all conversations to a minimum. 
3. The importance of focused creativity cannot be stressed seriously enough.  Set some place aside for silence, where speaking is not allowed: a room to which people can go simply to think things through quietly. 
4. Give special thought to the needs of the people you employ. Human beings are not machines expected to run automatically without attention to their feelings. 
5. The more the conditions in the workplace inspire your staff to take an interest and to feel dedicated to your aims, the better it will be for everything and everyone.
6. Calming, and perhaps even inspiring music will help to filter out other sounds. So also will recorded environmental sounds, such as flowing brooks, waterfalls, or ocean surf. 
7. When one is concentrating deeply it helps to have as little noise around one as possible.
8. There is a close connection between the tongue and the brain. The more one can keep the tongue completely relaxed, the clearer he will find his mind become.
9. Keep silence at work for one hour only, in the morning at the start of the day. Once that hour has become a habit, extend it to two hours; then to three.
10. Much work necessitates communication with others. If you are the boss, you can let it be known that you can be reached only at certain hours. 
11. If you are the boss, it would be good to impose silence on everyone for certain periods at a time. You will find that when people can keep silence together for any period of time they become less inclined to speak, afterward. Soon, they will enjoy the silence. Win them to this idea, rather than driving or harassing them.
12. Relax your tongue! You’ll be surprised how little you want to speak, once you’ve learned to keep that little muscle in your body still and relaxed!

Workbook Ideas
by Joseph Bharat Cornell
The Importance of Listening

Paramhansa Yogananda was once asked why his most advanced disciple, Rajarsi Janakananda, made such rapid spiritual progress. Yogananda replied, “He knows how to listen.” 
Our minds are like short-wave radios: when the switch is set to “broadcast,” all we can hear is our own voice talking. A busy, chattering mind is always in “sending mode,” which prevents us from experiencing anything new. We only begin to hear when the switch is turned to “receive.” 
Similarly, true inspiration comes when the mind is calm and listening. Talking less is a marvelous practice for deepening one’s receptivity and concentration. Practicing silence also increases productivity because focused, sustained attention is the key to attracting solutions.

Action Ideas 
A. Paramhansa Yogananda said that most people use only one-tenth of their ability to concentrate. When you restrain your speech and practice silence, the mind becomes less impulsive and centers itself more on what you’re really doing. 
1.	To increase receptivity and concentration: keep silent for one hour, preferably at the beginning of each work day. 
2.	Once that hour has become a habit, extend it to two hours; then to three. 
3.	After incorporating silent times at work, ask yourself, “Have I noticed an improvement in the quality and quantity of my work?” 
4.	“Do I feel more energy and inspiration?” 
5.	Remember, the less you talk, the more energy you will have! 

B. It is not always possible, or appropriate, to be silent at work, but we can practice being quiet. It is estimated that only a tiny part of our speech—some say 1%—is due to the demands of our outer environment. The rest of the time the urge to talk comes from the desire to relate to others. 
Conversation in the workplace is not always uplifting or helpful to office harmony and focus. The admonishment given in monasteries, "Do not speak unless you can improve on the silence," is a helpful guideline for appropriate speech.  

How to practice the art of being quiet: 
1.	Concentrate more on listening to life. Avoid the sense that you have to direct it. 
2.	Remain centered in yourself. 
3.	When you feel the urge to talk, restrain your first impulse to do so. Ask yourself, “Will my words contribute to the situation? Improve on the silence? Bless others?” 
4.	When you break your silence, speak as long as you feel inspiration but no longer; then return to the silence.  
5.	Enjoy the tranquility. Express a sense of inner calmness in everything you do. 

C. Practice the techniques of silence and quiet regularly. The more you do, the more you will experience their benefits: increased energy, deep concentration, and inner joy and serenity.