AUM
You
have probably heard the sacred syllable aum, (it) is the sound that is
not made by two things striking together.
When
one pronounces aum, the sound starts in the back of the mouth (“a”) and
then it fills the mouth cavity (“u”) and then it closes at the lips (“m”).
If this is pronounced correctly – and it’s not an easy thing to do – the
notion is that you have pronounced all the open sounds that a human mouth can
form. MoL 33
Aum is God. Aum
is God as sounds. We usually think of the divine as a form,
as an image that we can visualize, but this is the sound aspect of the form that
we are going to find when we meet God. It is the sound of
God, the sound of the Lord of the World, out of whose thoughts, out of whose
being, out of whose energy substance the world is a precipitation.
Aum is the word of words, that original
Logos that we find
in the Gospel According to John: “In the beginning was the word, … and the word
was God.” MoL 33
Since
aum is the Lord of the World, everything in the world and all the aspects
of the world must be somehow understood to be included in aum.
MoL 33
To
understand it this way, we have to say some things in an allegorical way.
Becoming
aware of the wonder of this mystery and of its fascination, like that of the
sound of a seashell held to the ear, we are hearing, so to say, the sound
anahata, “not hit,”
which in the Indian tradition is described as
So pronounced, (OM) is known as the four-element sound: A-U-M and a fourth, the
fourth being the Silence out of which the sound emerges, back into which it will
go, and which supports it throughout as a ground against which the A, U, and M
are heard.
“A,”
that fine open sound, is associated with waking
consciousness, the way we
experience things when we are awake. Now, when we are awake
the objects that we see are not ourselves, that is to say subject of knowledge
and object of knowledge are different from each other. In
waking consciousness, Aristotelian logic prevails, a is not b, I
am not what I see. Also, the objects that we see are what are
considered to be made of gross
matter; they are made of heavy substance.
They are not self-luminous; rather, they must be
illuminated from
without.
So
that in this sphere, although Subject and Object appear to be different they are
the same. TMD 212
“U,” is associated with dream consciousness; now this is quite a different
realm of awareness altogether. In dream, you are the subject
of knowledge – you see the dream – but you are also the object of knowledge; it
is your substance that embodies the dream. Though subject and
object seem to be different from each other on this stage, they’re not.
At this point Aristotelian logic does not work: the subject and object
are the same. Furthermore, the objects are subtle objects;
they can change form rapidly and effortlessly. Also, they are
self-luminous: you don’t have to turn a light on to see the objects in your
dream.
Now comes the big point: the deities of vision are of this sphere and of the
same luminous stuff as dream. Accordingly the vision and the
visionary, though apparently separate, are one; and all the heavens, all the
hells, all the gods and demons, all the figures of the mythic worlds, are within
us as portions of ourselves – portions, that is to say, that are of our deepest,
primary nature, and thus of our share in nature. They are out
there as well as in here, yet, in this field of consciousness, without
separation. Our personal dreams are our personal guides,
therefore, to the ranges of myth and of the gods. Dreams are
our personal myths: myths, the general dream. By heeding,
interpreting and following dreams we are led to the large, transpersonal fields
of archetypal vision – provided, of course, that rational interpretations are
not binding us back continually to our own cakras
one, two, and three. As the Hindus say, “To worship a god,
one must become a god”; that is, one must find that part within that is the
deity’s equivalent. This is why (in mythological language)
God the Son, Knower of the Father, has to become in each of us ghostly born
before we can know, as He does, the Father, and say with Him, in knowledge and
in truth, “I an my Father are One” (John 10:30); or with
Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).
TMD 212
The “m” is associated with dreamless, deep sleep. This
is the realm of mystery. Consciousness is there, as
potential, because the person asleep is
conscious but
unconscious.
The third order then is mmm,
which is deep, dreamless sleep. Consciousness is there.
The heart is ticking. The body will respond to heat
and cold. Bud waking consciousness, the aham
consciousness, the ego-consciousness, is not in touch with pure consciousness.
It is wiped out by darkness. The goal of
yoga is to bring your waking
consciousness into that
field of mmm, awake. Then what it will experience is
undifferentiated consciousness, not the consciousness of any thing, but that
primary consciousness to which we are trying to “yoga,”
to link, our waking consciousness. That’s what we’re talking
about. TMTT 163
Passing on to M: the reference here is to the condition of Deep Dreamless
Sleep: no dreams, just darkness. There is consciousness,
however, beneath the darkness, hidden, of no specific thing or things, whether
of waking or of dream; undifferentiated; whole; sheer light.
The ultimate goal of yoga is to enter that field awake; coming there to full
union with that light. The experience is effable, beyond
words, since words refer to objects and their relationships, whether of waking
or of dream. Hence – Silence, the fourth part of the syllable
AUM. TMD 213
Now om can be written in
Roman letters either as o-m or a-u-m; o in Sanskrit is analyzed into a
and u. It is the four-element syllable: a, oo, mm,
and the silence out of which om comes and back
into which it goes. The Indians will always recognize that ground in
silence, in the infinite, in transcendent, in the void.
But now, just one more word about AUM and the states of consciousness to which its elements are referred. As the Upanisad points out: the objects known to Waking Consciousness are of the past; having already become, they are apprehended an instant later (or, if very far away, like stars, it will be light-years before they are perceived). Consequently, our sciences and statistical analyses, dealing as they must with what is past, are telling us only of what has already occurred, projecting perhaps into the future, but on the basis only of a known past. No real novelty, no really new thing or even can be thus foreknown to science. But the forms beheld in Dream are of the present. Apprehended immediately in the moment of their life, our life, they are of our own becoming, right now, and of the powers that are moving us. Our effective myth, that is to say, is what is moving us as dream. However, this effective myth may not be the same as that which, in our waking state, we think we believe in, and to which we pay our worship on Sundays(…). TMD 213
The hearing of the syllable AUM occurs as the rising kundalini reaches the level of the heart and wakens the lotus, anahata, of cakra four, and it marks the beginning of our life as truly Man, aware of the mystery dimension of things. At this Moment our relationship to things changes. They are no longer simply objects of our lust or aggression, but vehicles of the syllable AUM. We hear it everywhere, out there, in here. We are no longer desirous but in bliss, and the Indian Tantric saying, iti iti, “It is here! It is here!” is the Good News of our life. “The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth.” TMD 213
However, a new zeal, a new
yearning, may now arise in us, to know and to hear that sound directly, not
through things, but unmediated – the zeal, that is to say, of the religious
quest. And to this end one may abandon the world, as hermits
do, and as Jesus did in his retreat to the desert, from which he returned only
to teach. “Let the dead bury their dead” (Matt. 8:22).
“Sell what you possess and give to the poor, and come, follow me” (Matt.
19:21). TMD 213