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Just as the astronomer in the Paris Observatory sees through the great telescope across myriads of miles of space, so the Yogi sitting in the cave sees and understands by his intuition subtle realities which the ordinary mind cannot even dream of. What has the Yogi seen? He has seen that the human soul is part of a great music of Love, a music which is perpetually ringing, like the sound of a bell heard from afar. Our voices, our thoughts, are only pale echoes of the original music. Every man is a note in the vast diapason divine. It is therefore true that only those who attain to such a height as to be able to understand their own life and its divine nature can be truly happy. Such men are born on earth from time to time. They reveal the grant secrets of life. Without them civilisation could never have progressed . . . Men who are busy the whole day with their cattle and their fields, with their shop or their wife and children—their thoughts are so chained to the earth that they cannot understand this truth. Every little incident in their earthly life disturbs their equanimity. A son is born to them and they are exceedingly happy, and then perhaps he dies, and they are exceedingly unhappy. This is because their mind has never gone up to the upper window to catch a glimpse of the vast empyrean, it is always staring through a hole in the cellar into the darkness beneath its feet. That is the difference between a Yogi and an ordinary man. The ordinary man is always seeing the darkness and misery of this world, but the Yogi sees the grand beauty of heaven. You may ask how he sees this beauty when his body is on earth? It is very simple. Think of the astronomer. While his feet are resting on the earth his eyes are seeing the most distant stars. Similarly though the Yogi’s body is here, though his physiology is associated with the physical aspect of the cosmos, his soul is free and sees the grand beauty beyond. When a man sees the soul, the true life, then only does he understand his duty. The voice of the soul is always uttering the truth.
Swami Sri Ananda Acharya [1881-1945], Spiritual Talks. Ed. by Einar Beer (Hoshiarpur, India: Vishveshvaranand Vedic Research Institute, 1957), pp. 27-28