THE SILENCE OF THE BODY
Idris Lahore
Idris Lahore’s The Silence of the Body is written with such clarity that it reads like a series of Haiku poems, each of them awakening what is most profound in us. The Socratic dictum, “Know thyself, and you shall know the universe and the gods,” is the leitmotif that runs throughout the book.
“What we cannot discover in our body, we cannot discover in any other place in the world” – thus the book’s first line, and through a series of short texts, remarkable for their lucidity and concision, the author explains how we may gain access to this knowledge through our body, by allowing the forces of inner calm and attentive consciousness to come alive in us.
Idris Lahore also describes how we can rid ourselves of the conditioned thoughts and emotions that are not our own, liberating ourselves from them, and giving us in this way the keys that permit us to escape from the infamous “cave” described by Plato. To be the observer of our thoughts, emotions, and actions, without taking ourselves for them; as in meditation, to be attentive, while remaining innerly calm and present… Then we may experience inner silence, and an opening unto a reality of a more subtle nature becomes possible. A book to be discovered and meditated upon, inviting us above all to discover ourselves.
The photographs that accompany the text illustrate the art of bodily positions, gestures, and movements, which here has its source in the Sufi science of the movements of Samadeva. This art can also be found throughout the history of art, evoking in particular the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Rembrandt, Van Eyck, and Georges de la Tour, as well as Gothic sculpture and sacred statuary.
Biograhy – Idris Lahore
Since his childhood, Idris Lahore has been immersed in both Eastern and Western traditions and cultures, and over the course of his extensive travels and studies throughout the world, he acquired a profound knowledge of these traditions as well as a subtle understanding of the human psyche. He is the author of numerous titles published in several languages.
– 80 pages
– 35 color illustrations, Consort Royal paper,
– ISBN 2-35195-003-8
