The Meaning of Aum

Namaste,

I begin my classes here at Unity Woods and out on the road the same way every time. I sit with the students for a few minutes, either in Sukhasana or Virasana, palms folded in front of the chest. As we sit, I give some instructions to relax the students and redirect their attention inward. Then we sound Aum together three times. Although in my classes here the same students tend to stay from session to session, inevitably, a few leave and some new ones take their places. So every now and then, I talk with them about why we chant Aum. There are several reasons.

One is that Aum is a soothing sound that allows us to settle down from the busy-ness of the world and invites us to turn our awareness inward.

Another is that because we begin Aum with our mouths wide open and gradually close our lips as the sound progresses, we transition physically as well as mentally from projecting ourselves into the material outer world to redirecting ourselves into the inner world of the Spirit.

Yet another aspect I mention is that the sound ahhhh starts in our chests at the heart center (Anahata Chakra), moves upward with the ooooo sound in the throat center (Vishuddha Chakra), and ends with the sound mmmmm., which vibrates the higher centers in the head (Ajna and Sahasrara Chakras). Thus, it represents and enhances the upward movement of energy along the spine that occurs as we progress in our practice.

There are many more meanings behind the sacred syllable Aum. In the introduction to Light On Yoga, B.K.S. Iyengar says, "A few instances of the various interpretations given to it may be mentioned here to convey its meaning." He then mentions these "few instances" for another page and a half.

Amongst all of these, the interpretation of Aum that is most meaningful and powerful to me is as the representation of the Primordial Vibration, the Original Sound, the First Word. Maybe it's because I'm a musician, but in explaining this aspect of Aum to my students, the image that works best for me is that of a stringed instrument. When you pluck or strike one of the strings on a guitar, for instance, the other strings, though unplucked themselves, nonetheless vibrate in resonance with the vibration from that plucked string. In a very real sense, we are-indeed all of creation is-nothing more or less than strings vibrating in resonance with the First Vibration or Word. Much of what we do in our practice of yoga, it seems to me, is to work on tuning ourselves more and more exquisitely, so that as we resonate with that First Sound, represented by Aum., we do so as harmoniously as we can. Perhaps even more important, our practice prepares us so that if and when we, ourselves, are plucked, our tone is as clear and beautiful as the Earth's song on a spring morning, and the vibrations we send out are steady and balanced, in sync with the pulse of the Great Cosmic Ooze.

Lest this strike you as a complete flight of fantasy, attractive, perhaps, but a little out in the ozone, let me relate it to a story I read in the paper the other day. A headline on the front page had caught my eye. "Calculating Contents of Cosmos," it said, with the subtitle "Ordinary Matter Makes Up Only 4.5 Percent, Teams Find".

Although that may sound like pretty ponderous stuff, I find articles about astrophysics and quantum physics really interesting. Not because I'm a science buff. In fact, in school I avoided mathematics-oriented sciences such as chemistry and physics like I avoid Republican fundraisers. I notice such articles, however, because ever since I read The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra a couple of decades ago, I've been fascinated by the parallels between Yogic philosophy and Western science concerning the origins and nature of the universe.

The newspaper article presented information about the current theory that the universe is made up primarily of stuff astronomers call "dark matter" and "dark energy". Only 4.5% is ordinary matter, which the author, Washington Post Staff Writer Kathy Sawyer, described as "all the shining stars and galaxies, plus people, computers, cats and so on". The "dark matter" and "dark energy" part was intriguing, but I found another piece of the story even more fascinating.

It stated that, "Three independent teams of astronomers yesterday presented the most precise measurements to date of the infant universe..., exposing telltale reverberations they called Ôthe music of creation'.... [T]he research teams reached back across time and space to take precise readings of light emitted about 400,000 years after the Big Bang explosion that gave birth to the universe."

The article quoted John Carlstrom of the University of Chicago as saying, "We're looking back as far as you can go with light-14 billion years, or roughly the age of the universe,... In a sense, [the ancient light] allows us to Ôsee' sound in the early universe."Aum.

When I read those words, I couldn't help but think of the biblical passage, John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."Aum.

I recalled also that in Genesis (1:1-3), the Bible says, "In the beginning God created the heaven and earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deepÉ. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."

The Old Testament is saying that in the beginning, even before there was light, God, the Creator who made heaven and earth, existed. And the New Testament declares that in the beginning God was the Word. According to the Bible, then, heaven and earth-the cosmos-issued forth from the Word.Aum.

And the most current scientific beliefs described in The Washington Post article are in fundamental accord with the Bible. The entire cosmos, they say, emanates from the "music of creation".  Aum.

I find it exciting that both the ancient Judeo-Christian and contemporary scientific explanation of the Creation seem to point in the same direction. And just as exciting, these explanations agree completely with the teachings and philosophy of Yoga.

B.K.S. Iyengar, for example, in Light On The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, says, "Sound is vibration, which, as modern science tells us, is the source of all creation." (This is in his commentary on the 27th sutra of the first chapter, which refers to the meaning of pranava or Aum.)

The Amrita-Bindu-Upanishad states that, "The imperishable sound [om] is the supreme Absolute."

Georg Feuerstein in The Yoga Tradition says, "The syllable om... is held to be or to express the pulse of the cosmos itself. It was through meditative practice rather than intellectual speculation that the seers and sages of Vedic times arrived at the idea of a universal sound, eternally resounding in the universe, which they saw as the very origin of the created world."

It's so fascinating that the very same things ancient (and contemporary) yogis, sages, and seers discovered by peering through their inner eye into their inner universe, the modern day scientists are discovering as they peer through their telescopes into the far recesses of the outer universe.

The great Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan says it very well: "The one who seeks truth through science, the one who searches for it through religion, the one who finds it through philosophy, the one who finds it through mysticism-in whatever manner one seeks truth, one finds it in the end."

He goes on to say, "A world in the making can be likened to a great jigsaw puzzle whose separate parts have life and are capable of independent movement. The way in which man can find his own place is to tune his instrument to the keynote of the chord to which he belongs. Sound is the force which groups all things from atoms to worlds. The chording vibration sounds in the innermost being of man and can only be heard in silence. When we go into the inner chamber and shut the door to every sound that comes from the life without, then will the voice of God speak to our soul and we will know the keynote of our life." Aum.

Reprinted with Permission
John Shumacher
Unity Woods Yoga Center
http://www.unitywoods.com
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