water, and then becomes rapidly absorbed in chidakas (the Akasa where consciousness pervades).  The sound..... serves the purpose of a lure to the ocean waves of Chitta (mind), ...the serpent Chitta through listening to the Nada is entirely absorbed in it, and becoming unconscious of everything concentrates itself on the sound.”  We may quote further from another Upanishad.  “Having left behind the body, the organs and objects of sense, and having seized the bow whose stick is fortitude and whose string is asceticism, and having killed with the arrow of freedom from egoism the first guardian, ....he crosses by means of the boat Om to the other side of the ether within the heart, and when the ether is revealed he enters slowly, as a miner seeking minerals enters a mine, into the hall of Brahman. ...Thenceforth, pure, clean, tranquil, breathless, endless, imperishable, firm, unborn, and independent, he stands in his own greatness, and having seen the Self standing in his own greatness, he looks at the wheel of the world.”

Let no one think that this is all, and that the mere repetition of words will do anything except injure those who attempt the use of these methods without further knowledge.  It has been said (Path, April, 1887) that Charity, Devotion, and the like virtues are structural necessities in the nature of the man who would make this attempt.  We cannot, unless the whole nature has been purified by long services and sacrifice, and elevated into mood at once full of reverence and intense will, become sensitive to the subtle powers possessed by the spiritual soul.

What is here said about the Aum which is the name of our own God, and the way in which it draws forth the hidden power will serve to illustrate the method in using other words.  The Thara-Sara Upanishad of Sukla-Yajur Veda says “Through Om is Brahm produced:  through Na is Vishnu produced; through Ma is Rudra produced, etc.”  All these are names of gods; they correspond to forces in man and nature, in their use the two are united, and the man mounts upwards to the Immortals.

I have been forced to compress what I had to say in these articles, I have only been able to suggest rather than put forward ideas, for my own knowledge of these correspondences is very incomplete.  As far as I know the subject has been untouched hitherto, and this must be my excuse for the meagre nature of the information given.  I hope later on to treat of the relation of sound and colour to form and to show how these correspondences will enable us to understand the language which the gods speak to us through flowers, trees, and natural forms.  I hope also to be able to show that it was a knowledge of the relation of sound to form which dictated the form of the letters in many primaeval alphabets.

—­5/15, 6/15, 7/15, 8/15, 9/15, 1893

At the Dawn of the Kaliyuga *