“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.”
“ Ich bin so gross als Gott ,” sings Angelus Silesius again, “ Er ist als ich so klein; Er kann nicht über mich, ich unter ihm nicht sein. ”
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 Dhâranâ. … 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 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. ”