A mantra, a sound, has freed me from the blackest night of my life. A sound 20 minutes long. Mind you, the sound. Not the word.
It was able to free me because the path into the light was known to me and the place of light was often inhabited by me. So the sound only lifted a veil – and the golden path of eternal truth lay spread out before me again.
That is the reason why every man must have trodden that path and inhabited that place. Not in order never to fall into darkness again. But to know of it. And not, when a small light in the darkness makes the veil shine through, to simply stare behind it into still further, still deeper darkness; because he has nothing to which he can direct himself again, because no path into the light is anchored in him.