In The Sphere of Silence Summary I Vijay Eswaran

Book – In the Sphere of Silence (Summary)

Author – Vijay Eswaran

Genre – Self-help Book

Published in – 2005

The Sphere of Silence is one of the shortest and most immensely impactful books I have read on the significance of Silence and its benefits whether we are looking at advancing our careers or elevating our personal lives.

Vijay Eswaran claims that, when practiced diligently, Silence can be a potent tool. It is not oriented to any religion; it is accepted universally and practiced by almost all faiths.

Eventually, it helps us better understand who we are, what we are, and, in particular, why we are here. This, in turn, will bring us to who we can be.

About the Book – 

In the Sphere of Silence, it is more than just goal setting, a common practice. Goals are moving targets, changing as our ability to analyze and the project grows.

In this silent 1 hour retreat every day, we don’t only set goals; we start with reflecting on yesterday before setting goals for the day so that we can amend our act to ensure we accomplish any undone goals today.

The author divides one hour into three parts, namely Duly, Knowledge, and Devotion, and claims that the combination of these three makes the sphere of Silence the most powerful tool to succeed in both business and life.

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A few Key Points From Each Section

1)  DUTY –

The path of duty refers to our worldly and material goals and responsibility towards career, family, society, and country.

Here, we spend the first 30 minutes dividing further into three blocks of 10 minutes.

• The first 10 minutes to retrospect yesterday or the last 24 hours, contemplating what was done and what wasn’t. How could it have been better? As mentioned in the book – Retrospection, when done diligently, will reveal that we generally don’t make new mistakes. We merely repeat old ones.

• The following 10 minutes are allocated to decide goals for the day. Please don’t confuse this with a to-do list; this activity aligns with our long-term goals.

• The last 10 minutes are given for noting our long-term goals, further divided into three parts.
  • Goals for the next seven days
  • Plans for next year.
  • Goals for the next five years.

• The author insists on writing this daily to cement it in our minds and keep our actions aligned with our goals. This daily reminder inspires us to wake up, face the day, and strive to improve.

• Goals may change occasionally as we experience life, and our perspective broadens as we move along. Each part of this exercise and its significance is nicely explained in the book.

2)  KNOWLEDGE –

In part two of this one hour, Vijay Eswaran suggests spending 20 minutes acquiring knowledge.

Pick a book for the sake of the pursuit of knowledge. Read for 15 minutes, try remembering key points, and note them in the text in the next 5 minutes.

There are numerous benefits of this activity, to name a few –

• It increases our short-term memory, a significant component in holding meaningful conversations at or outside work.

• As you finish the book, at the end, you will have a summary of the text written by yourself for future reference.

• Reading is one of the most common habits of highly successful people in all aspects of life, and it allows access to great minds to anyone who wants to learn from the best.

• When we read from the perspective of making notes, our focus and comprehension improve drastically.

3) DEVOTION –

These last ten minutes must be utilized in communing with God without speech. However, it also needs to be written down. One may put down all the questions that concern him, or it can be used as a confession. It needs to be a heart-to-heart conversation.

As mentioned in the book – The best way to understand God is to understand yourself.

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Benefits of Practicing Sphere of Silence

1) As we practice reflecting on yesterday, we mostly repeat the same mistakes. It can be a massive hit to the ego; however, it can help advance our life once understood.

2)There is a lot of research on writing goals. One who has written goals has a 90% higher chances of achieving them.

3) It helps us keep going when things get tough. It reminds us why our goals matter and we must pay the price.

4) As we write our goals every day, eventually, we will realize and might change plans that don’t make sense, and it does happen when priority changes and perspective broadens in life.

5) Writing this Goal, enhancing knowledge, and communing with our higher self in this 1 hour can make thoughts much more straightforward and speech & action much better.

6) Vijay Eswaran has explained Anger, Ego, and attachment straightforwardly and suggests that as we go deep into the practice of the Sphere of Silence, these things lose grip on us.

Here are a few Great Quotes from the book – 

1) If your thought is what it should be, you will have little trouble with your action. Yet remember that to be beneficial to humanity, belief must result in action. There must be no laziness but constant activity in good work.

2) Committing is not about undertaking a new responsibility. It is about recognizing one that you have. It is a measure of your respect for yourself.

3) One should see twice as much as one speaks. One should think & hear twice as much as one says. One should breathe twice as much as one speaks.

4) Saying the right words only sells your intentions. While showing that you mean what you say can buy trust, doing what you say seals it.

5) When you are too busy listening to yourself talk, you don’t listen to others. There is too much noise outside and within.

6) We must repeatedly ask ourselves: Does our anger matter? For what we do in anger seldom does.

7) You are the master of every word you have yet to utter but a slave to every word you have spoken.

I have also created a video of a few quotes from the book – I hope you like it. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel – Myread4change. 

Conclusion –

There are many practices out there for setting goals. However, this differs significantly, as it helps set goals, explains why we put them, confirms the growth with a daily postmortem of yesterday, and reiterates plans in writing.

I highly recommend this book and urge you to put Sphere of Silence into practice. Please give it a go. You will be glad you did. You may follow the author Vijay Eswaran and his work on his website.

If you like this book, you may also like Stillness is the Key by Ryan Holiday.

See you in the zone.

Muzammil