In the active life, I can measure silence negatively as an interruption. In the contemplative life, I am without any measure. In the active life, the concept of experience is meaningful because I can suppose the existence of a subject and an object. In the silence of the sacrifice, the one object that exists must disappear and in this way must invalidate the idea of selfhood. Only with the ceasing of any exchange between subject and object does imminence as a way to transcendence take the place of experience. Immanence has a resonance that the concept of experience can never have.
