Occurring throughout a lifetime, at infrequent and remote intervals, they have, since I became a Theosophist, increased until they embrace all isolated moments. They consist of a resonance difficult to describe, but resembling the vibrant note of a distant locomotive, resounding in the night atmosphere of a mountain gorge, and partaking somewhat of that melodious wail caused by running the moistened finger around the rim of a glass. Sometimes, though rarely, a low orchestral harmony unites briefly with this monotone. Unable to find any word which conveyed this cadence, I now discover that the word “_Aum_,” (hitherto unknown to me,) does so exactly, the A sound being the opening note, which prolongs itself into the M, or closing sound, when the keynote is then struck over again. Thus the “Singing Silences” mainly consist of innumerable repetitions of the word “Aum,” distinctly and musically uttered, having a resonant or vibrant quality, and a measured rise and fall, such as all sound assumes if one alternately closes and uncloses the ear. If the analyst will alternately inhale air with the mouth and expel it with the nostrils, he will gain a fair idea of this sound minus its musical vibration. It is, moreover, invariably accompanied by a sensation of physical repose, even peace, and a perfect mental quiescence which falls about me like an enfolding mantle. The frequency of these moments has greatly increased since my attention has been specifically turned to them. Hitherto, beyond a momentary curiosity as to their nature, I attached no importance to their occurrence; the very rarity caused them to be easily forgotten in the whirl of every day life; I admitted to myself with surprise, however, that my innumerable pleasures, my keen enjoyments, shrank to nothing before the deep delight of these brief but peculiar moments, and I applied to them the opening lines of Faber’s hymn to music. Reading the article on “Aum” in the April “PATH,” I was startled by such passages as this: “There is, pervading the whole universe, a homogeneous resonance, sound, or tone, which acts, so to speak, as the awakener or vivifying power, stirring all the molecules into action.” I then called to mind various facts connected with Sound, as for instance, that a regiment marching over a bridge is ordered to “break step,” lest the regular footfall strike the “coefficient of vibration,” which would destroy the bridge: also that the measured trot of the smallest dog will cause a perceptible vibration in a wire bridge, no matter what its size. Moreover, the monotonous sound of the railroad, in time changes the texture of the car wheels and axles from fibrous into crystalline, with consequent fracture. In Reichenbach’s “Researches on Magnetism,” we find this statement. * * * “The following laws prevail in nature. _A._ There resides in matter a peculiar force, hitherto overlooked, which, when the crystalline form has been assumed, is found acting in the line of the axes.”