Civilized people feel a loneliness and even an extreme melancholia in the jungle of the mind that may make stillness a terrifying experience, but we can pass through this barrier if we will learn to understand it. Then we would discover, as the Indians did long ago, that to stand in solitude on a mountain top at sunrise or sunset, or by a waterfall in some hidden canyon of ethereal beauty, and to absorb this majesty with utter peace and awe, in which the soul merges with creation, and self is forgotten, is to become one with a joy and happiness so tremendous that no mere earthly pleasure can compare.
The first three notes -- the root, the fifth, and the minor third -- seemed entirely magical. In their simplicity he heard the implication of the whole piece itself, and from that, from his awareness of the fugue, came an awareness of all-of-music, as if all notes were contained in any single note. The perception was evanescent, but so powerful as to wipe away thoughts of himself. Music is here! Music has been here forever and always will be here! It was so much larger than life, so ineluctable strong, so potent an indicator of a kind of heaven on earth, that all else was swept before it. He saw this in a flash. In a nanosecond.