higher and purer levels of consciousness. The four elements constituting the child's birthright of instinctive or intuitive knowledge are (in Ernest Raymonds words) eternal Wisdom, temporal Vision, healing touch and poignant humour. It is surely significant that the superlatively gifted ones of the BHAGAVATA–Kapila, Dhruva, Prahlad, Vamana, Gokula Krishna—are all boys, five years of age (or not much older), yet sovereign in their understanding. “Heaven lies about us in our infancy”, says wordsworth, and addresses a child as “mighty seer, prophet blest”. And there is a good deal of truth in all this, and hence it asks for a special gift of percipience-and directness of utterance to rise high enough-in the spiral of consciousness to reach the child's native altitudes of comprehension. The child CAN vision infinity in a grain of sand, the Apocalypse in a familiar toy, and omnipresent Reality in seeming make— believe. The child's 'intimations of immortality’and clairvoyant gifts add up sometimes to the kind of illumination that is the settled wisdom of saints like Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, and what is important in children's songs is the use of everyday language to serve as the ‘Open Sesame' leading the child to explore on his own the interior countries of the Spirit. Aids like assonance, alliteration, initial and terminal rhyme, bold metaphor, suggestive imagery, repetition and refrain, all can come handy, but the secret of secrets is the power of the song to reach xxii
