are best spoken to by mystical truth. Many mystical scriptures are indeed little more than musical compositions.
"He who would hear the voice of Nada, 'the Soundless Sound,' and comprehend it, he has to learn the nature of Dhâranâ. … When to himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all the forms he sees in dreams; when be has ceased to hear the many, he may discern the ONE—the inner sound which kills the outer. … For then the soul will hear, and will remember. And then to the inner ear will speak the voice of the silence. … And now thy Self is lost in self, thyself unto thyself, merged in that self from which thou first didst radiate. … Behold! thou hast become the Light, thou hast become the Sound, thou art thy Master and thy God. Thou art thyself the object of thy search: the voice unbroken, that resounds throughout eternities, exempt from change, from sin exempt, the seven sounds in one, the voice of the silence. Om tat Sat."[1]
These words, if they do not awaken laughter as you receive them, probably stir chords within you which music and language touch in common. Music gives us ontological messages which non-musical criticism is unable to contradict, though it may laugh at our foolishness in minding them. There is a verge of the mind which these things haunt; and whispers therefrom mingle with the operations of our understanding, even as the waters of the infinite ocean send their waves to break among the pebbles that lie upon our shores.
"Here begins the sea that ends not till the world's end. Where we stand,
Could we know the next high sea-mark set beyond these waves that gleam,
We should know what never man hath known, nor eye of man hath scanned. …
Ah, but here man's heart leaps, yearning towards the gloom with venturous glee,
From the shore that hath no shore beyond it, set in all the sea."[2]
