AUM

If you read my article, "The Significance of AUM"¹ , you will know in detail about AUM. Madame H.P. Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, observed AUM in a very simple and significant way. She said, “AUM means good actions, not merely lip-sound. You must say it in deeds.” In order to know what AUM is and what it stands for one is well advised to study the Upanishads that speak of AUM. The Mandukya Upanishad offers us the significance of AUM explicitly. The meaning of AUM can be known from books. But the knowledge of AUM can never be had by studying books. It must be achieved by living an inner life, a life of aspiration, that will transport the aspirant to the higher levels of consciousness. The easiest way and the most effective way to go up high, higher, highest is to surcharge oneself with pure love and genuine devotion. Doubt, fear, frustration, limitation and imperfection are bound to surrender to devoted love and surrendered devotion. Love and devotion have the power unparalleled to own the world and be owned by the world. Love God’s Manifestation; you will find that the cosmic creation is yours. Devote yourself to the cause of the cosmic manifestation; you will see that it loves you and claims you as its very own.

It is true that knowledge can give you what love and devotion give, but very often knowledge is not cultivated for the sake of truth, but for the fulfilment of desires. Fruitless is the pursuit of knowledge when desire looms large in it. When the aspirant is all love and devotion, he soars.

During his journey’s flight he sings:

No more my heart shall sob or grieve.
My days and nights dissolve in God’s own Light.
Above the toil of life my soul
Is a Bird of Fire winging the Infinite.

At the end of his journey’s flight he sings:

I have known the One and His secret Play;
And passed beyond the sea of Ignorance-Dream.
In tune with Him, I sport and sing.
I own the golden Eye of the Supreme.

He has now grown into his own Goal. Self-amorous he sings:

Drunk deep of Immortality,
I am the root and boughs of a teeming vast.
My Form I have known, and realised.
The Supreme and I are one — all we outlast.

— Sri Chinmoy, Revelation