Opening Remarks
The original stir of creation is a cosmic vibration. It is the original sound that subsequently diffuses into various vibratory modes. Of these, what we experience as sound is the grossest outer vibration. But behind this is a subtle world climbing in a series that is built by sound-vibrations. The science of tuning our consciousness to this inner sound is what is known as Nada Yoga. Here we see Aswapati travelling through the subliminal layers of consciousness through this sound.
Lost spiritual home
As one drawn to his lost spiritual home
Feels now the closeness of a waiting love,
Into a passage dim and tremulous
That clasped him in from day and night’s pursuit,
He travelled led by a mysterious sound.
Aswapati now feels an inward pull as if one is drawn towards one true spiritual home from where one had strayed. He feels as if his secret lover and sole beloved is waiting for his home-coming. Through a dim and vibrating passage reaching beyond Time’s pursuit, Aswapati is led further by a mysterious sound.
All sounds it was
A murmur multitudinous and lone,
All sounds it was in turn, yet still the same.
This inner sound was at first experienced as a cosmic murmur, a single sound that contained within it all other sounds.
Summoning voice
A hidden call to unforeseen delight
In the summoning voice of one long-known, well-loved,
But nameless to the unremembering mind,
It led to rapture back the truant heart.
At once it seemed a summoning voice of a long-known beloved calling us to sport with delight, drawing our hearts that have gone astray, with rapture even though our mind no more remembers the Name of our long lost Beloved.
Immortal cry
The immortal cry ravished the captive ear.
The call and the cry ravished our ears help captive to the melody. It was an immortal cry persisting through a change of body and name and birth and death.
Whisper round the soul
Then, lowering its imperious mystery,
It sank to a whisper circling round the soul.
Then slowly it changed from its imperial tone into a whisper surrounding the soul.
Lonely flute
It seemed the yearning of a lonely flute
That roamed along the shores of memory
And filled the eyes with tears of longing joy.
It was like the yearning of a lonely flute calling us through shores of memory and filling our eyes with tears of longing joy.
Magical reveille
A cricket’s rash and fiery single note,
It marked with shrill melody night’s moonless hush
And beat upon a nerve of mystic sleep
Its high insistent magical reveille.
It was like the shrill melody of the cricket in moonless night calling us to wakefulness through a magical reveille pressed upon some secret nerve in trance.
Anklet bells
A jingling silver laugh of anklet bells
Travelled the roads of a solitary heart;
Its dance solaced an eternal loneliness:
An old forgotten sweetness sobbing came.
The sounds became as of the anklet bells of the goddess of delight dancing along the roads filling the lonely heart with sweetness and joy.
Bee-croon
Or from a far harmonious distance heard
The tinkling pace of a long caravan
It seemed at times, or a vast forest’s hymn,
The solemn reminder of a temple gong,
A bee-croon honey-drunk in summer isles
Ardent with ecstasy in a slumbrous noon,
Or the far anthem of a pilgrim sea.
Or it was as the tinkling of bells from far off as is heard when a caravan passes at a distance, or of a forest hymn or a temple gong. Sometimes it was heard as the crooning of bees drunk upon the honey of flowers and filled with ecstasy in summer isles. Or else it sounded as the far anthem of a sea with its waves performing pilgrimage from shore to shore.
Closing Remarks
These experiences of an inner hearing are well-known to yogis and come as our inner being opens to higher states of consciousness.
