The Scented Garden

18 Introduction I love when I love my God ; and yet in this love I find light ; an inner voice, a perfume, a savour, an embrace of a kind which does not leave the inmost of myself. There in the depths of the soul glows something which is not in space : there a word is heard which has no syllables : thence there breathes a perfume which no breezes waft away : there food is always savoured and never eaten : there are embraces which never ask to end...” 3. The few who still suppose that Omar Khayyam was a libertine should read the exposition of Book XI of this Purana. 4. Manes (Mani) the heresiarch was of course a Persian. 5. I cannot agree that such a moment necessarily intervenes between normal and Samadhic con- sciousness, or, as the Buddhists assert, that there is a long series of intervening states invariable and well-defined, though perhaps this may sometimes be so. Nor is the appearance of the “ Dweller ” a sure earnest of success : on the contrary, many (even most) will fail to pass this terrible barrier. 6. Crede experto ? Ed.