of a thinker who knows. Water in water,
fire in fire, ether in ether, no one can distinguish them: likewise a
man whose mind has entered into the Self."[272] "'Every man,' says the
Sufi Gulshan-Raz, whose heart is no longer shaken by any doubt, knows
with certainty that there is no being save only One.... In his divine
majesty the ME, and WE, the THOU, are not found, for in the One there
can be no distinction. Every being who is annulled and entirely
separated from himself, hears resound outside of him this voice and
this echo: I AM GOD: he has an eternal way of existing, and is no
longer subject to death.'"[273] In the vision of God, says Plotinus,
"what sees is not our reason, but something prior and superior to our
reason.... He who thus sees does not properly see, does not
distinguish or imagine two things. He changes, he ceases to be
himself, preserves nothing of himself. Absorbed in God, he makes but
one with him, like a centre of a circle coinciding with another
centre."[274] "Here," writes Suso, "the spirit dies, and yet is all
alive in the marvels of the Godhead ... and is lost in the stillness of
the glorious dazzling obscurity and of the naked simple unity. It is in
this modeless WHERE that the highest bliss is to be found."[275] "Ich
bin so gross als Gott," sings Angelus Silesius again, "Er ist als ich
so klein; Er kann nicht uber mich, ich unter ihm nicht sein."[276]

[272] Upanishads, M. Muller's translation, ii. 17, 334.

[273] Schmolders: Op. cit., p. 210.

[274] Enneads, Bouillier's translation. Paris, 1861, iii. 561.
Compare pp. 473-477, and vol. i. p. 27.

[275] Autobiography, pp. 309, 310.

[276] Op. cit., Strophe 10.

In mystical literature such self-contradictory phrases as "dazzling
obscurity," "whispering silence," "teeming desert," are continually met
with. They prove that not conceptual speech, but music rather, is the
element through which we 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 Dharana.... When to
himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all the forms he sees
in dreams, when he 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