belief – of almost any kind – and in particular for those for whom silence was part of a search for precisely that gift. This is a clear example of where it is useful to look beyond religious descriptions of silence. But more or less the same set of feelings appears in many accounts of silence by people who have no particular religious agenda and leads me to suggest that this is a response to silence as much as to religious ecstasy, although the latter provides a rich interpretation. Richard Byrd, contemplating the onset of the polar night (not simply ‘evening’ in the usual sense) described in almost mystical terms this experience of everything being connected:
The day was dying the night was being born – but with great peace. Here were the imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos harmonious and soundless. That was what came out of the silence, harmony, a gentle rhythm, the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres perhaps. It was enough to catch that rhythm momentarily to be myself a part of it. In that instant I could feel no doubt of man’s oneness with the universe … the universe was cosmos not chaos; and man was as rightfully a part of that cosmos as were the night and day. 28
Moitessier speaks at length, especially in his film Song of the Siren , about this unitive experience that he often had at sea:
There was no longer man and boat, but a man-boat, a boat-man … What you would call isolation, but I call communion. The things that mattered at the start didn’t matter any more … I want to go further because there is something more to see. 29
More specifically, while sailing along the southern coast of Australia, Moitessier records an extraordinary contact with a large shoal of over a hundred porpoises. They were not behaving as porpoises normally do, but were ‘nervous’ and agitated. In what seemed to him an almost military way a group of them keptrushing off, always to the right, always returning and repeating the same manoeuvre. He watched them, entranced and baffled, until he happened to glance at his compass and saw that Joshua had changed course on a changing wind and was heading directly towards Stewart Island, a rocky outcrop on which his yacht might well have foundered. As soon as he changed back to his correct course, the porpoises seemed to ‘celebrate’ and then disappear. He wrote:
This is the first time I feel such peace, a peace that has become a certainty, something that cannot be explained, like faith. I know I will succeed and it strikes me as perfectly normal: that is the marvellous thing, that absolute certainty where there is neither pride nor fear nor surprise. The entire sea is simply singing in a way I had never known before, and it fills me with what is both question and answer … I will round the Horn thanks to porpoises and fairy tales, which helped me rediscover the Time of the Very Beginnings, where each thing is simple … Free on the right, free on the left, free everywhere. 30
Christiane Ritter writes of her polar experiences:
I lie down in my little room where the moonlight filters green through the small snowed-up window. Neither the walls of the hut nor the roof can dispel my fancy that I am myself moonlight, gliding along the spires and ridges of the mountains, through the white valleys. 31
Although a distinctly more prosaic writer, Geoffrey Williams, another single-handed yachtsman, reports an experience extremely similar to these:
I was no longer Lipton ’s helmsman. I became part of her. I was a limb of Lipton , another sail, another tiller; the ship and I were one. But Lipton was part of the scene, so I became part of the scene, nolonger outside looking in, but inside looking out. I was part of the chorus, neither conductor nor spectator, but singing as part of the environment. 32
This sense of vast connectedness, of oneness with everything is so central to the core of mystical prayer that it can be distinctly
The day was dying the night was being born – but with great peace. Here were the imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos harmonious and soundless. That was what came out of the silence, harmony, a gentle rhythm, the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres perhaps. It was enough to catch that rhythm momentarily to be myself a part of it. In that instant I could feel no doubt of man’s oneness with the universe … the universe was cosmos not chaos; and man was as rightfully a part of that cosmos as were the night and day. 28
Moitessier speaks at length, especially in his film Song of the Siren , about this unitive experience that he often had at sea:
There was no longer man and boat, but a man-boat, a boat-man … What you would call isolation, but I call communion. The things that mattered at the start didn’t matter any more … I want to go further because there is something more to see. 29
More specifically, while sailing along the southern coast of Australia, Moitessier records an extraordinary contact with a large shoal of over a hundred porpoises. They were not behaving as porpoises normally do, but were ‘nervous’ and agitated. In what seemed to him an almost military way a group of them keptrushing off, always to the right, always returning and repeating the same manoeuvre. He watched them, entranced and baffled, until he happened to glance at his compass and saw that Joshua had changed course on a changing wind and was heading directly towards Stewart Island, a rocky outcrop on which his yacht might well have foundered. As soon as he changed back to his correct course, the porpoises seemed to ‘celebrate’ and then disappear. He wrote:
This is the first time I feel such peace, a peace that has become a certainty, something that cannot be explained, like faith. I know I will succeed and it strikes me as perfectly normal: that is the marvellous thing, that absolute certainty where there is neither pride nor fear nor surprise. The entire sea is simply singing in a way I had never known before, and it fills me with what is both question and answer … I will round the Horn thanks to porpoises and fairy tales, which helped me rediscover the Time of the Very Beginnings, where each thing is simple … Free on the right, free on the left, free everywhere. 30
Christiane Ritter writes of her polar experiences:
I lie down in my little room where the moonlight filters green through the small snowed-up window. Neither the walls of the hut nor the roof can dispel my fancy that I am myself moonlight, gliding along the spires and ridges of the mountains, through the white valleys. 31
Although a distinctly more prosaic writer, Geoffrey Williams, another single-handed yachtsman, reports an experience extremely similar to these:
I was no longer Lipton ’s helmsman. I became part of her. I was a limb of Lipton , another sail, another tiller; the ship and I were one. But Lipton was part of the scene, so I became part of the scene, nolonger outside looking in, but inside looking out. I was part of the chorus, neither conductor nor spectator, but singing as part of the environment. 32
This sense of vast connectedness, of oneness with everything is so central to the core of mystical prayer that it can be distinctly
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