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Dhammapada · narration sample

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Your Forces and How to Use Them · 31 of 74

Volume III: VI. Voice of the Mountain

Humanity still seeks to climb heavenward, Up Babel towers of swarded wealth, And still is blind to that Great Law Which discord, strife, confusion sends amid the workers As monitors to show God must be trusted, Not fought with barricades of bank safes. For him that trusts, the world is his, Skies, mountains, clouds, birds, trees, and flowers, Lakes, streams, storms, calms, crowded cities, empty wastes, All cry to him “Enjoy!” Solitude, the vulgar’s dread, becomes his inspiration. The mountains nurse him, With Diety upon their tops oft he renews his covenant— Nor needs for other company. Babble there of common things to him is blasphemy! Sublimer even than the thunder’s roll Is Shasta’s icy silence, Brooding over past eternities, When present sun and system were unborn; When naught was save the Great I Am! Before whom earth’s age and history to atom dwindles. So to Him speak the Sierras, Ever pointing with fingers, storm‑worn and scarred, Beyond all time, and space, and thought, Beyond all law, all plan, all theory, Pointing to that void, terrible, unknown and inconceivable, Never to be lit up, Without beginning, ending, bounds or history. Here man fears God, At once his littleness and greatness feels— Little that he’s an atom of the infinite mystery— Great that he’s a part of Infinite Divinity. This is the voice of the mountains! Nor what men call learning, nor culture, nor civilization are needed to

know its meaning. Often it speaks loudest to unlettered men. The Indian hears it plainer than we; He is content to live only that he may hear it. He cares not for ships, nor roads, nor arts, nor commerce, Nor the heaping up of gold, Nor to babble, or prate, or preach; Content with what nature sends him. As a child the father, so he trusts the Great Spirit. A few hear this voice! God has moulded and fashioned them, He has singled them out and beckoned them to follow Him into the wilderness, He has effaced their likeness to common men, He has for them placed thorns in every broad road, that they shall walk in the straight and narrow path; And when they hear His voice, When all that was and is, and is to be, ever murmurs in their ears, With a mighty sound which is yet a mighty silence, Then are they ready to speak to men. Their lives are as new books, Open for all worthy to read. Open, honest, impulsive, impassioned lives— Nature trusted in the sight of men. Thought, passion, sentiment, the evil and the good, the gold and the

dross, All openly displayed; They are as living sermons, more potent than pulpit homilies.

Asked of Guide

Why does Mulford say mountains speak with a 'mighty silence' to certain people?

Mulford means the mountains communicate a presence beyond words: a vast, pre‑historical consciousness that makes human concerns shrink and inspires trust in the “Great I Am.” The silence is mighty because it conveys awe, eternity, and a covenantal summons that ordinary learning cannot reproduce.

He insists this voice often reaches unlettered or solitary people—those shaped to hear rather than to accumulate gold—so their lives become “living sermons.” This echoes Emerson’s Nature, which says the natural world bestows direct spiritual knowledge on those who patiently attend it.

Guide is the guide inside the Gnosis app, where every book on these shelves is free to read. Guide is the part you pay for — your guide has read all of them, and answers about the passage you’re actually on. Ask your guide your own question.