The Quest for Silence

"Wilmer points out how silence gives meaning to words, dreams, thought, action and music. From his long experience as a Jungian analyst, he weaves his ideas into an eminently practical treatise on the phenomenology of silence.

With many references to literature as well as his personal life experiences and crises, he offers a readable and important new story of the universal and spiritual significance of silence in a world of jackhammer noise."

- from the Preface by Joseph Henderson


Contents


Preface by Joseph L. Henderson

Foreword by Elizabeth Silverthorne

1. A Gap-Filling Society

A Case in Point 

Silent Gaps 

Tell Me About Silence 

Noise Treatment 

When Silence Needs a Noisy Companion 

Silent Treatment of Nations

2. The Nature of Silence

Philosophers and Poets

3. Pandemonium and Silence

A Patient Seeks Sanctuary in Silence 

The Off-and-On Phenomena 

My Most Daunting Experience

4. Listening

On Doing Nothing 

Let Us Not Forget Pooh Bear 

Prophesy at the Threshold 

Threat of Death

5. War

A Noiseless Blast 

The Sky Gaps 

The Mountain Gaps 

Synchronicity? 

Max Cleland: Vietnam Triple Amputee 

It Is So, But the Prophesy Is Not Fulfilled 

On Not Being Able to Talk 

The Seventh Seal is Silence 

Home of the Brave 

Savages Attack: Who is Possessed by Demons? 

Wartime Secret

6. MA

The Japanese Word MA 

MA in America - Not 

MA Is Sometimes Ma 

Crafted MA 

The Significance of MA in Japanese Culture 

The Tao

7. Spirit and Death: The Ultimate Ordeal

Dream One 

Dream Two 

Dream Three 

Synchronicity 

My Death 

The Unfillable Gaps: Death and the Black Hole 

The Black Hole and the Death of the Sun 

Avoiding Another Dark Age

8. Patience

The Great MAW 

Patience and Waiting 

The I-Thou/I-It Cycle 

Meditation, Contemplation, and No-Mind 

A Word on the Temper of Our Times 

Meditation and Yoga 

The Monastery 

Entering the Contemplative Monastic Life 

Solitude 

Seeking Another and Sex 

Kathleen Norris 

In patientia vestra habetis animam vestram:

An Alchemical Exhortation 

And What Can We Do About Silence and Noise? 

The Quest for Silence 

Bibliography