Revelation 18:22 · World English Bible
The voice of harpists, minstrels, flute players, and trumpeters will be heard no more at all in you. No craftsman, of whatever craft, will be found any more at all in you. The sound of a mill will be heard no more at all in you.
Here the carnal man goes silent. Babylon is that whole materialistic, emotional self a person has built, and its music is the pleasant noise the senses keep playing so the flesh never has to sit still: strings and pipes and trumpets that keep attention busy on the outside.
From the Esoteric reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
ESOTERIC
Here the carnal man goes silent. Babylon is that whole materialistic, emotional self a person has built, and its music is the pleasant noise the senses keep playing so the flesh never has to sit still: strings and pipes and trumpets that keep attention busy on the outside. When the inner fire rises and burns that state away, the entertainment stops, the trades that served appetite close down, and the grinding wheel of the pineal stone falls quiet in the place of emotions where it had been turning.
That quiet is not loss but clearing. The carnal self runs on constant stimulation, and when it is overthrown the sounds it lived by simply cease, because there is no longer a lower nature left to amuse.
Babylon: the carnal, materialistic emotional self a person builds over a lifetime Harpers and pipers and trumpeters: the pleasant distractions of the senses that keep attention fixed outward Craftsman: the appetite's trades and busywork that serve the flesh Millstone: the pineal stone, turning in the place of emotions until the inner fire stills it
Esoteric lens
How much of my day is sound I put there so I would not have to be quiet?
Return to stillness, and the churning settles on its own. What was loud had only been motion, and motion ends.
The teachers say the mind is like muddy water: stop stirring it and it clears by itself. Silence is not something added, it is what remains.
When the senses are stilled and the mind rests, the inner light is seen. The noise was never the self, only the self's entertainment.
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Esoteric