meditation."


There came a murmur to his ears; a murmuring of many voices, smothering
the utterances of his own, like a tumult of waters. The stars went out
before his sight; the heavens darkened their infinities: all things
became viewless, became blackness; and the great murmur deepened, like
the murmur of a rising tide; and the earth seemed to sink from beneath
him. His feet no longer touched the ground; a sense of supernatural
buoyancy pervaded every fibre of his body: he felt himself floating in
obscurity; then sinking softly, slowly, like a feather dropped from the
pinnacle of a temple. Was this death? Nay, for all suddenly, as
transported by the Sixth Supernatural Power, he stood again in
light,--a perfumed, sleepy light, vapory, beautiful,--that bathed the
marvellous streets of some Indian city. Now the nature of the murmur
became manifest to him; for he moved with a mighty throng, a people of
pilgrims, a nation of worshippers. But these were not of his faith; they
bore upon their foreheads the smeared symbols of obscene gods! Still, he
could not escape from their midst; the mile-broad human torrent bore him
irresistibly with it, as a leaf is swept by the waters of the Ganges.
Rajahs were there with their trains, and princes riding upon elephants,
and Brahmins robed in their vestments, and swarms of voluptuous
dancing-girls, moving to chant of _kabit_ and _damâri_. But whither,
whither? Out of the city into the sun they passed, between avenues of
banyan, down colonnades of palm. But whither, whither?

Blue-distant, a mountain of carven stone appeared before them,--the
Temple, lifting to heaven its wilderness of chiselled pinnacles,
flinging to the sky the golden spray of its decoration. Higher it grew
with approach, the blue tones changed to gray, the outlines sharpened in