kathopanishad-1-2-15-sarve vedā

Commentary by Swami Krishnananda of the great Divine Life Society

Nachiketas, having posed this question, evokes the answer of Yama who says, “Nachiketas, dear boy, listen to me.” Sarve vedā yat padam āmananti, tapāṁsi sarvaṇi ca yad vadanti, yad icchanto brahmacaryaṁ caranti, tat te padaṁ saṁgraheṇa bravīmi: aum ity etat (1.2.15): “I shall tell you that which all the Vedas unanimously glorify. I shall tell you that which is the goal of all kinds of tapas, or austerity, in this world. I shall tell you that which is to be attained by complete self-restraint, or brahmacharya. I shall tell you what it is. Om—this is the truth. This Om, this pranava, is the symbol, or the emblem, or the representation of universal Reality. Knowing this, one has everything in one’s hand. The moment you think that you want something, that is in your hand, provided that you know what Om is.”

Let us see what it means.

Om is the principal mantra which is attached to every other mantra, and it is a sound vibration which produces a sympathetic effect in the system of the person who recites it properly. We should not chant Om in a hurry—Om Om Om Om Om Om. That is not the way. Sometimes when people do purascharana of Om for some 3.5 lakhs or crores, and they want to finish it as early as possible, the quality gets absorbed into quantity. We should not do that. Nor also should it be lengthened too much. It should be moderate, medium, capable of getting properly accommodated into the mind and the physical system. When we do purascharana, japa, recitation of Om, neither should it be too short, nor too quick, nor too elongated.

Aaaaauuuuummmmm. It should taper off gradually into a soundless ethereal state. In the beginning it is a gross sound, as it were, that gradually becomes more and more subtle, ethereal, until it melts into a soundless pure vibration, without the grossness of the sound produced. Aaaaauuuuummmmm, Aaaaauuuuummmmm, Aaaaauuuuummmmm, Aaaaauuuuummmmm. This is the vaikhari, or the gross form of sound. It becomes gross, known as vaikhari, when it is audible; and when it is inaudible, it is only mentally chanted.

There are four stages of sound: para, pashyanti, madhyama and vaikhari. Sound has a vibration which starts with the naval, and when we chant Om, we should feel a sense of vibration in the naval itself. It should start from the very root of our plexus, corresponding to the naval. It rises up gradually. Para is inaudible, pure vibration, having no characteristic of sound. It is a pressure that we are exerting, and it comes from a source which is beyond the constitution of the physical body. We summon into ourselves, as it were, the forces of nature, all things and everything. “The power of the mountains, the power of the ocean, the power of all the rivers, the power of all the trees in the forest, the power of the sun and the moon and the stars, and the power of the sky, I withdraw into myself.” Feel like that when you recite Om. And, as the saying goes, what you think you are, that you really are.

This is a meditation by which we keep ourselves open to the influx of the forces of nature. The whole universe is vibration. It is a large quantum of force, energy and motion, of which we are a little part, a modicum, a little eddy or a wave in the sea of force. Therefore, let this eddy on the surface of the ocean feel its harmony with the vast sea of force. Let the ego subside. Open up the gates, the doors and the windows of the sense organs. Let in the influx of this force that is universal.

But the sense organs will not permit the entry of the universal force as long as the ego is conditioning it. The ego is the affirmation of individual personality, and universal force is the contrary of it. Nothing that is universal will contact that which is particular, or egocentric. We are mostly egocentric persons, very much conscious of our body and mind and personality, and never feeling a unity with the atmosphere outside, not even being truly friendly with people. Such is our ego. But that has to be shed. This trait has to be given up. And in the meditation, in the chanting, in the recitation of Om, it has to become not merely a recitation or a chant but a veritable meditation, a communion process taking place between the deepest essences in us with the deepest essences in the universe.

Para is the soundless origin of the sound process. As I mentioned, it is just pressure, a pressure point. It cannot be called sound in a tangible, audible, intelligible sense. It manifests itself into a slightly gross, articulated form in a very minute, subtle way in the next stage, called pashyanti. It becomes more comprehensible in the sense of getting into an integrality of knowledge when it becomes the third stage, madhyama; and it actually becomes audible when it is vaikhari. The words that we speak which are listened to, which are audible, which we can hear, these sounds are vaikhari. So when we chant Om it starts with vaikhari, the actual production of an audible sound. From there, it gradually tapers off into the thinness and vaporised ethereal condition of the sound melting into the soundless state. The Manduka Upanishad tells us that the three matras—A-U-M—constituting Aum, or Om, become amatra, or non-constituents of the word symbol, the amatra, the fourth state, being practically identical with the universality of the Atman. This is how we have to place ourselves in the context of the universal setup when we recite Om.

Then what happens to us? We become friendly with all things in the world, and all things become friendly with us. Animosity ceases. We do not become only friends; it is much more than that. We commune one into the other so that when proper meditation, by the process of chanting Om, is carefully conducted every day without remission of effort, we shall gradually feel ourselves as super-individuals, a miniature cosmos within ourselves.