Nothing knows the bondman of his bondage,
Nothing knows the lord of all his lordship,
Gone from such a night is eating sorrow,
Gone the thoughts that question good and evil.
Then, without distraction or division,
In the One the spirit sinks and slumbers.
Silesius has the same thought, cold and dry, after the poetic Persian, yet in words that would furnish no inapt motto to express in a sentence this species of mysticism:—
Ne’er sees man in this life, the Light above all light,
As when he yields him up to darkness and to night.[[194]]
The ascetic Sufi bids the mystical aspirant close the senses against every external impression—for the worlds of sense and of contemplation reciprocally exclude each other. We have seen how the Hindoos and the Hesychasts endeavoured literally to obey this counsel, reiterated so often by so many mystagogues:—