Dohas] General Introduction 17 tutes the highest ascent of man towards the Life Divine. Of course, this ascent is to be made through a number of rungs of the spiritual ladder, but before we tackle this problem, it will be necessary for us to make a preliminary investigation, both philosophically and psychologically, of certain fundamental conceptions such as the relation of intuition to intellect, the meaning of internal perception, and the question of the inter-com- municability or otherwise of various kinds of sensuous and super-sensuous experiences. After this preliminary investigation, it will be our task to consider the varieties of super-sensuous experience, which form the keynote of the present chapter. Of course, these kinds of supersensuous experience are stressed wherever and in whatever form of literature an attempt is made to climb the ascent. In the Dohas in Hindi literature we find in an inexplicable and cryptic form, and at the same time very accurately, all the stages with which we are conversant in other provinces and other literatures, which may therefore be regarded as the distinct contri- bution of the Dohas to the psychology of religious expe- rience. The first thing stressed in the Dohas is the Anahat sound, the consequent music, and the necessity for coming into contact with the musician who produces the music. Then we go on to a brief philosophical indication of the nature of the Anahat Shabda and see how this is experienced in a super-sensuous manner. Next, we shall proceed to visual experience, both morphic and photic, which characterises the rising Saint, and then to other super-sensuous experiences, such as the spiritual bath, the spiritual juice and the spiritual
