The film
Into Great Silence (German: Die Große Stille) is a documentary film directed by Philip Gröning that was first released in 2005.
It is an intimate portrayal of the everyday lives of Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse, high in the French Alps (Chartreuse Mountains). The idea for the film was proposed to the monks in 1984, but the Carthusians said they wanted time to think about it.
The Carthusians finally contacted Gröning 16 years later to say they were now willing to permit Gröning to shoot the movie, if he was still interested. Gröning then came alone to live at the monastery, where no visitors were ordinarily allowed, for four and a half months starting in mid-March 2002.
He filmed and recorded the sound on his own, using no artificial light.
Additional shooting of the documentary took place in December and January; Gröning spent a total of six months filming in the monastery and took about two and a half years to edit the film before its release. The film has neither commentary nor sound effects added, consisting only of images and sounds of the rhythm of monastic life.
My personal view on the phenomenon “monastery” and the film
Personally, I do not consider the phenomenon “monastery” as being part of the holistic views and insights, since monasteries are related with theology and religions. There have been monks and nuns however who have become whole because of human evolutionary processes that created a higher awareness, and were named “holy”, wholy, a saint. In the 80s I read a book about Teresa of Ávila, and I am convinced that she has experienced the kundalini awakening.
The kundalini energy was understood by the yogis in the (not with the Bible related, but Buddhist) monasteries in India and Tibet, the Himalaya, for instance, and they wrote about it. When I started to experience the kundalini energy, in the 80s, it was so unknown that not any book about it was available in bookshops, and not any MD or psychologist knew where I was talking about. Unfortunately the situation has not changed yet. Internet did not exist.
I found the answer via a rare book, that was offered to me by a catholic priest who lived in the same small village. He has guided me mentally during a time that psychological processes, human processes, were absolutely unknown to the public, in the way as these are more and more understood now, today, not in the mainstream circuit however, but in alternative therapies, and even today, 2025, 45 years later, this subject is hardly possible to discuss.
Not even today one will find the subject in the mainstream media, and it is still not known to the most of the psychologists and psychiatrists, while lots of physical and psychological problems are related with that awakening energy, and its process. The priest was ridiculed by the people in the village, and even in the religious congregation, the Oblates of Saint Francis de Sales, where he belonged to. That he lived in that village, and continued to follow his own path, while staying a priest and doing his work as a priest, like his colleagues, but in a deeper way, and could offer me answers that have been essential for my further development, is nothing less than good luck, or even a miracle. We need signposts on our life path. Only then we will not get lost. He offered me also important books, not a Bible, but among others the books written by Osho, Etty Hillesum, and Lao Tzu. He organized guided group meditations. Article about the priest, published in September 1988 in a regional newspaper: The inbeing is simply ignored.
About the film: I consider the silence in the film, the organized, humble, harmonious, simple way of living in a monastery —far away from the noisy crowds and their materialistic, shallow, chaotic life style— to contemplate and meditate —possible because of the silence and the enormous beneficial space of sacred emptiness, enabling the possibility to empty the head and find wholeness from within, by connecting with the deepest Self— and the way of filming and producing [w]holistic. Important: being in nature in the way as explained in Shinrin Yoku, is comparable.
Recommended: Information about the Belgian Miek Pot. She lived 12 years as a nun in a monastery. Unfortunately not available in English, but the text can be machine translated: Twelve years living in silence.
Abdij van Berne, the Netherlands
Because of the guaranteed silence, and all other named psychological health benefits, the Dutch monastery “Abdij van Berne” offers possibilities for staying there for a while as a guest, or as a group. For information about “guests”: visit their website, a Dutch website, but in case needed you can contact them via telephone or email.
