2.Om, Sweet Om

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Akshara-Brahma yoga/Topic of Imperishable Brahman (chapter 8)

In the eighth chapter, Krishna unfolds Brahman as an all-pervading, non-changing reality. The same brahman is called Ishwara with respect to the manifested universe as we saw in the seventh chapter and he presents this as ultimate subject of meditation and he says for this in the 11th verse….

Yad aksharam vedavido vadanti visanti yad yayatyo vitaragah   /

Yadicchanto brahmacaryam caranti tatte padam sangrahena pravaksye // 11 //

 I will tell you briefly about that end, which does not decline, about which knowers of Veda talk about, which the renunciates, free from desire, enter, and desiring which people follow a life of study and discipline.

 In fact, I don’t think there can be a better symbol, a better word for God than `Omkara’. It’s not a Sanskrit word, it’s a sound symbol. Traditionally, `Om’ was never written down, `Om’ remained as a sound. Why? Because when you hear the word `Om’ , you are supposed to understand what Ishwara is. When you hear the word `Om’, the figure `Om’ , the alphabet `Om’, the drawing of the symbol `Om’ will come into your mind, instead of Ishwara once we in ignorance started writing it down.

These are the two symbols that we have: one is called a `pratima’, a physical form, like the statutes of Rama, Krishna etc., the other is a sound manifestation which is called `pratika’. `Om’ is supposed to be a pratika, only a sound manifestation. It is very interesting to see how the word evolved or was understood by the rishis. Ishwara is everything; therefore, to call Ishwara by a name would mean you are eliminating all other standpoints and taking only one standpoint. All forms are his forms; therefore, which name will you use? Because a name will always stand for a form. Like the word `table’ stands for the object `table’, and so if I use the word `table’, then all other forms are eliminated just because I used the word `table’. I don’t want to use a word now which will eliminate all other words, all other standpoints, as he is all forms. I know one thing for sure: all forms are represented by names, and all names are nothing but sounds. You’ll say they are `words’ and not `sounds’, but words are nothing but alphabets and all alphabets are representatives of sounds. Therefore, really speaking, all forms in the world can be represented by sound.

All sounds, as far as any being is concerned, start from the gullet and end on the lips. Supposing I open my mouth and make a sound only from my gullet, it would be the sound ‘Ah’, and when I make a sound with the closed mouth, it ends with `m’, makara. Therefore, all sounds begin with `Ah’ and end in ‘M’, and to represent all the syllables in between they chose a sound ‘U’, because for the sound ‘U’ you require the word from the gullet modified in your mouth by the way you shape your mouth. Therefore, ‘Ah’, ‘U’, ‘M’ joined together to become ‘Om’ is purely a phonetic combination (not combined by any sandhi rule). All sandhi rules are supposed to be represented by phonetics. Therefore, if you say ‘Ah’, ‘U’ and ‘M’ rapidly, without a break, you will get the syllable Om. A single syllable called ‘Om’ to represent a single reality called Ishwara. Reality may be manifest as many, but Ishwara is one… In fact, there is only Ishwara represented by Om. Therefore,you cannot have a better word for Ishwara than OmOm became the most universal symbol for Ishwara. It’s a tragedy now that it has become a Hindu symbol. It could have been a symbol that is universally accepted, because, universally, everybody takes God as everything—to be omnipotent, omnipresent, God has to be everything. Therefore, it would have been a good symbol for a universal representation of Ishwara.

Now a question can be asked: What about the reality behind Ishwara, the pure awareness? Isn’t that left out in Om? The rishis were really very wise. When you are contemplating, you are chanting Om, and between two Om there is silence. In fact, the sound Om arises from this silence and dies down into this silence exactly as Ishwara manifest from Brahman resolves into BrahmanBrahman is Ishwara. Therefore, the silence between chanting what is very often called as a-matra Om, without a written/oral symbol in it, becomes the representation for the pure consciousness as well. Om becomes a symbol for both Ishwara and the reality. There can’t be a better symbol for meditation than Om, though it is true that, generally, Om is added to a mantra when you meditate. They say that no mantra is a mantra unless Omkara is added to it. This, Krishna says, is the whole teaching summed up in one syllable–Omkara.

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