OM and the Power of the Sacred Word in Yogic Philosophy
And when he came up out of the
Water, immediately he saw the
Heavens opened and the Spirit
Descending upon him like a dove;
And a voice came from heaven,
“Thou art my beloved Son; with
Thee I am well pleased.”Mark 1: 10-11
From a spiritual perspective, the object of
meditation is more important than the process.
If developing concentration were the only goal
of meditation, we could focus our mind on any
attractive object. Yogic literature is full of
stories about mediators who gained enormous
powers of concentration either by practicing
trataka (fixed gazing) or by focusing their mind
on an object of their own choice.
There is no meditation without
concentration. For this a one-pointed mind is
important, but determining the direction that
our concentrated mind will travel is even more
important.
Rather, the essence of a mantra is nada
(pure, unstuck, eternal sound), what the
evangelist John was referring to when he
wrote, “In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Nada contains the entire universe in its
unmanifest form. It is the source of all mantras,
and it is their true form.
As we practice, first we repeat it mentally,
and then we begin to hear it. As our practice
deepens, the sound of the mantra neither
becomes more subtle and silent, until
eventually we neither repeats nor hears it, but
rejoice inwardly in its soundless sound. This is
the most pristine state of the mantra, one that
duplicates the original experience of the
mantra’s first seer.
Om is a case in point. One of the most
popular sacred sounds, Om is the seed mantra
of universal consciousness. It has been
expounded in the Vedas, Upanishads, and
throughout Tantric literature. According to the
Mandukya Upanishad the three basic
constituent sounds of Om are a, u, and m; the
third syllable m is followed by the sound of
silence.
The word which expresses Him is OM. This
word must be repeated with meditation upon
its meaning. The Rig Veda also says the same
thing as St. John says” In the beginning was
Brahman, with whom was the word; and the
word was truly the supreme Brahman.”
Words and ideas are inseparable. You
cannot have the idea of God without the word
which expresses God. God is the basic fact of
the universe, he must be represented by the
most basic, the most natural, the most
comprehensive of all the sounds. And it is
claimed that this sound is OM (or AUM, as it
should be properly pronounced). To quote
Swami Vivekananda: “ The first letter, A, is the
root sound, the key, pronounced without
touching any part of the tongue or palate; M
represent the last sound in the series, being
produced by the closed lips, and the U rolls
from the very root to the end of the sounding board of the mouth. Thus, OM represents the
whole phenomena of sound producing.”
OM is almost certainly the most ancient word
for God that has come down to us through the
ages. It has been used by countless millions of
worshipers- always in the most universal
sense; implying no special attribute, referring
to no one particular deity. If such use can
confer sanctity, then “OM” IS THE MOST
SACRED WORD OF ALL
