‘Aum’ is not a word, it is a pure sound, so it has no meaning as such. It is a pure sound, like the sound of a waterfall. What meaning does it have? No meaning at all. The sound of an aeroplane passing by, what meaning does it have? No meaning at all. A sound becomes a word when meaning becomes attached to it. A meaningful sound is a word, a meaningless word is a sound. So, the first thing to be understood is that Aum is not a word, it is pure sound. All other words have arisen out of it, but it itself is not a word. It is the source of all sounds; it cannot have any meaning whatsoever.
Aum consists of three sounds: a, u, m. These are seed sounds. All other sounds are created by a, u, m.
That’s why Aum is not written alphabetically in India. It has a symbol of its own. That is simply to designate: don’t be confused and don’t try to think about Aum as a word. It is written pictorially, it has a picture, a symbol, which is outside the alphabet. These are symbolic things. It has been kept outside the alphabet because it is the source. The source is always out, beyond, transcendental.
Aum consists of three sounds and one anusvara. An anusvara is a very subtle sound; it represents a kind of humming. When you say, ‘au’ and the prolonged ‘m’, the humming sound that goes on reverberating is the anusvara. An anusvara means just a dot; that too represents something. So, Aum consists of four things: three visible, a, u, m, and the fourth invisible, the rhythmic, humming shadow.
These four represent the whole of Indian metaphysics. ‘A’ represents one state of the mind, when you are awake, the waking consciousness. ‘U’ represents when you are dreaming, the dreaming consciousness. ‘M’ represents when you are fast asleep, dreamlessly asleep – sushupti – deep, profound dreamless sleep. These are the three states of the human mind, human consciousness.
And the anusvara, the dot – that humming sound that goes on reverberating – represents the fourth, turiya, the transcendental state when you are neither asleep, awake, nor dreaming, when you are just a witness to all that is happening.
The word ‘turiya’ means ‘the fourth’. It has no other name because it cannot be named. This has to be understood first.
Then the second thing: when you have reached the fourth state, turiya, when nothing is heard but a melody, the celestial music – what Pythagoras has called the music of the heavens, the music of the stars, the music that is the very undercurrent of existence… When you have reached the fourth state of awakening, awareness, buddhahood, you hear music, which is not produced by any instrument. That melody is called Aum. It is not a mantra, as you have been told. Please never use Aum as a mantra; don’t go on repeating, ‘Aum, Aum, Aum’. If you repeat it, you will miss something, you will become habituated.
Abridged from The Secret, courtesy: Osho Times International, www.osho.com
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