OM / The Praṇava (Auṃ)
One syllable held to contain all reality — and the silence after it points beyond.
OM (more precisely Auṃ) is the most sacred sound in the Hindu tradition — chanted at the opening of recitation, meditation, and worship. Far more than a syllable, it is treated as the sonic form of the absolute itself. The Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad analyzes its three letters as the three states of consciousness, with the silence that follows pointing to the transcendent fourth. It is both a meditation object and a symbol of the whole.
How it traveled
- Chāndogya UpaniṣadKuru-Pañcāla region · -700explains
Key passages(18)
Controlling all the senses, confining the mind in the heart, drawing the Prâna into the head, occupied in the practice of concentration, uttering the one-syllabled "Om"—the Brahman, and meditating on
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Let a man meditate on the syllable Om, called the udgîtha; for the udgîtha (a portion of the Sâma-veda) is sung, beginning with Om. The full account, however, of Om is this:—
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Let a man meditate on the syllable Om, for the udgîtha is sung beginning with Om. And this is the full account of the syllable Om:—
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He replied: "O Satyakâma, the syllable Om (AUM) is the highest and also the other Brahman; therefore he who knows it arrives by the same means at one of the two.
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Yama said: "That word (or place) which all - the Vedas record, which all penances proclaim, which men desire when they live as religious students, that word I tell thee briefly, it is Om.
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As the form of fire, while it exists in the under-wood , is not seen, nor is its seed destroyed, but it has to be seized again and again by means of the stick and the under-wood, so it is in both case
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Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad · Vedic Revelation (śruti)
'That Brahman,' O Gargi, 'is unseen, but seeing; unheard, but hearing; unperceived, but perceiving; unknown, but knowing. There is nothing that sees but it, nothing that hears but it, nothing that per
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By making his body the under-wood, and the syllable Om the upper-wood, man, after repeating the drill of meditation, will perceive the bright god, like the spark hidden in the wood .
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Of the person in the right eye Bhuh is the head, for the head is one, and that syllable is one; Bhuvah the two arms, for the arms are two, and these syllables are two; Svar the foot, for the feet are
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Breath to air, and to the immortal! Then this my body ends in ashes. Om! Mind, remember! Remember thy deeds! Mind, remember! Remember thy deeds
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