Occult systems emphasise silence as important. Silence is identified not particularly with noise in the physical sense but rather the lack of conceptual interaction -mostly thought (accretions of pneuma). Hence one can be in a noisy environment and still tune into silence. Of course persons with highly developed concentration can be in talkative environments and still tune into silence; it’s just trickier.

Noisy here though simply means loud sounds, either natural or man made. Their possibility of inhibiting silence comes from their accretive nature (which of course is what thought and talk do). If we tune into our conceptual arrangement of the meaning of noises, we do not hear silence, we hear accretive noise.

Silence is about tuning out the accretions. Mystics may talk about the silence of existence. However some modern scientific revelations e.g. complex fungal networks point out the vast amount of communication that goes on in the seeming silent world. Complex chemical conversations take place all the time between organisms – is this not noise?

There are two points here. One is simply to say that we do not hear this noise and hence it does not impinge upon our silence. This though is somewhat anthropocentric, since what we are after is understanding the general silence of existence, it is however relevant as silence-to-us is a key factor (phenomenological).

The second is to say that thought/communication exists on a continuum that nevertheless has a threshold, after which the phenomena we have identified as accretions appears. Communication and thought develop in organisms. The more complex the conceptual system the more neurotic the organism can become. Noise is the development of accretions. The chemical conversations have not crossed the accretive threshold and hence do not fill the world with accretive chatter. Some animals’ (other than ourselves) thought and chatter no doubt is accretive, but equally may be interpreted as silence (just like our own chatter can be). However on an ontological level it contributes to the accretive interference that obstructs silence.