I heard sweet, enchanted music playing faintly beneath the sounds of my outer life, as if coming from forgotten dreams. Still-ly I listened, and the music grew more and more subtle, poignant, and sweet, drawing me inward until I could hear it no longer with my earthly ears.

Patiently I waited, striving to think whether I’d ever heard earthly music like the divine nuances of these new melodies. No. In my rich storehouse of memory I found no likeness to those enchanting sounds that had come and gone in my consciousness, like phantoms of idle reflection.

Had I really heard that music, or had I only imagined its sweet harmony? Was it the exquisite expression of my subtle, highest aspirations, or was it only the sound of harmonious whispers of passing fancy?

I waited. Deeply, inwardly, I listened. I entered through the portals of my subtle senses, and walked in the garden of my dreams of eternity.

At last, I saw dancing in those dreams shining waves and bouncing wavelets of craving through countless earthly incarnations. Then I heard, coming faintly over the water, strains of many wondrous melodies. None, however, were like those soul‐recollections which I had heard before, and lost.

Suddenly, in deepest silence, those ancient sounds returned, swelling up from beneath hidden memories of my soul. And then that music engulfed in one, huge billow all my waves and ripples of past craving, all delights and sorrows, all victories and failures, all expectations and disappointments of a myriad past lives. I needed no other sounds, no other vibrations of earthly fulfillment to satisfy my heart. Then it was that the lost music of my soul resounded at the heart of everything, pulsing from the very heart of all my private dreams.

Ear hath never heard,
Thought hath never conceived,
Love hath never trembled with,
Dream hath never visualized,
Tongue hath never told,
Nor can any ever describe
That ancient, long forgotten,
But yet anciently remembered music.
Behind the curtains of life’s ceaseless play
I found again, playing on harp strings of all deep feeling,
The lost, but now found,
Beloved music of my soul!

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215. A Million Salutations at Thy Petaled Feet, O Lotus of Light