Ever thought about it the time when there was no creation? Imagine a time when there was no time. Time too was created. After time, came the word Om in the form of dhwani, sound. Before this, Om existed as pure divinity, ‘sukshma iti sukhshma’. It was a void. It was silence. It was complete.
Om poornamadah poornamidam poornata poornam uddachyate poornasya poornamaadaya poornameva vashishyate, goes the sloka. That is, infinity plus infinity is infinity, infinity minus infinity is infinity, infinity multiplied by infinity is infinity and infinity divided by infinity is also infinity. Indicative of that, Om has everything in it. How do you get an experience of Om?
Look at the night sky, fix your gaze at any one point and without shifting your gaze, start rotating from right to left. After a while stop, close your eyes and stare at the point internally. What was your experience? What you felt inside you is just an iota of Om, from which all creation began, to which everything will eventually return.
Om is not a mere sound, it is the essence of Brahmand (creation), also called the Brahm naad. Om came after time, and so in a sense, it is bound by time, and yet is independent of it. To understand this, listen carefully when a guru chants Om. You will notice that it is a continuous loop of countless small Oms. The continuous Om is eternal, with the smaller Oms being bound by time representing the temporary aspects of physical creation. Each of us is an Om, which has the potential to become a continuous Om, under the sanidhya of a guru. This, in fact, is the route to moksha, to reality.
The experience of Om lies not in musical CDs, television programmes or social gatherings. It is a one-to-one relationship between the guru and the shishya. At many a places you might have read or learnt about Om—as A-U-M, the sounds of ‘a’, ‘ooo’ and ‘mmm’. But very few know that the fourth component of Om is silence. The continuous loop of Om has all four of these, including silence, for creation is a sum total of opposites. Om, being the essence of creation, is just that, a sum of sound and silence; of light and dark; of night and day; of the real and the unreal; of the temporary and the eternal; and of purush and prakriti. The dual aspects, purush and prakriti, unite to give form to creation.
The chanting of Om contains within it the phenomenal power of creation, giving form to thoughts. But for Om to have this effect, it must be chanted correctly under the guidance of your guru. While different mantras have their effect in different centres of the body, the vibrations of Om are felt in each and every cell, from mooladhar to agya, from toe to the head. And as you progress on the path of sadhana, Om starts approaching the frequency of the eternal Om. The subtler is the being or energy, when it gets closer to Om. A prime example is surya, or sun. You might be surprised to know that the sun too emits the sound of Om and is the source of shakti to all beings on earth. This has been validated by researchers at Sheffield University, the UK, who have recorded the sound of the sun.
Yogi Ashwini is the spiritual head of Dhyan Ashram.
(dhyan@dhyanfoundation.com)