Ohm Mystic Symbol of Hindus

The Mystic syllable OM is the choicest point of concentration prescribed for the benefit of the student of Vedanta, who is constitutionally more intellectual than emotional. In their early attempts at developing a highly concentrated mind and intellect, such students too need the help of a symbol or an idea which has infinite possibilities to entertain them with its inexhaustible contents. The genius in the Vedic Masters gave us OM as an ideal-idol to worship in the inner temple.

        Life is a constant flow of experiences, and these experiences, when observed, are found to fall in three layers, as the experiences of the waking-state, of the dream-state, and of the deep-sleep-state. The life of everyone of us is certainly influenced by our experiences on all these three different planes of consciousness, and they all have totally a positive influence in molding our character and personality. This would read slightly strange to the modern young man, because Western philosophy has been so far striving to discover the fundamental in life by an analysis and close study of merely the life available for us in our waking-state. It is indeed difficult, if not almost impossible, to come to a right evaluation of life and its meaning by observing only a third of its field.

     When the Rishis more and more closely observed these three fields of experiences they discovered that an individual identifying with his physical body comes to live his waking-state of outer gross objects as the ‘waker’.

      The same entity, totally in oblivion of his body and the outer world, when he exclusively gets identified with his mind and intellect, comes to revel in an inner world of dream, and experiences subtle objects of imagination, as a ‘dreamer’.

      When, again, the very same entity becomes forgetful of His body and its outer world, the mind and intellect and their feelings and thoughts, and comes to experience a world of nothingness, no doubt peaceful and joyful, but conscious of nothing but ‘nothingness’, he becomes the ‘deep sleeper’.

      The ‘dreamer’ experiences are totally different and sometimes even contrary to the ‘waker’s life’ and the experience of the ‘deep sleeper’ is common to all and seems to have no relationship with the waking and dream conditions of experiences. Yet, it is the experience of all of us that we can remember, on our waking, all about our experiences during our last ‘waking-state’, yesternight’s ‘early dreams’ and also the ‘peaceful sleep’ that we had afterwards. From these observations the Rishis conceived their bold and adventurous theory.

      The ‘Law of Memory’, is that one cannot oneself remember the experience of another. If one can remember anything at all, they are all actual experiences of the individual himself. That is to say, the law of memory enunciates that the rememberer and the experiences must be one and the same individual or else, memory is impossible.     Applying this ‘Law of Memory’ as a test, we find that the ‘waker’ and the ‘dreamer’ and the ‘deep-sleeper’ are strangers among themselves, each living in his own world, and has seemingly no passport to travel beyond its frontiers. Since we can remember all our experiences in all the three different planes, there must necessarily be a single Common Factor which was a witness of all the happenings in all the three planes.

      The Sages of the Vedas, after indicating this much to the students of Vedanta, want them to experience the Pure Subject who, in the waking-world becomes the ‘waker’, in the dream becomes the ‘dreamer’ and in the sleep becomes the ‘sleeper’.

     The sound OM is constituted of three syllables. A, U and M; and while chanting continuously the sound OM in the mind, the Upasaka is advised to superimpose upon these three sounds the three different planes of consciousness we have been describing so far, viz., the ‘waking’, ‘dream’ and ‘deep-sleep’. The process of superimposition is the same as the principle underlying all idol worship. We have already discussed this technique by which the Mighty is seen or imagined in the meager; Siva-Tattwa in the Siva-linga; the Divine Mother of Knowledge in the River Ganga; Sri Narayana in the Saligram; Christ on the Cross!

      The practitioner at his meditation thus trains himself consciously to superimpose the waker in him on the sound A; and then, as the sound A merges with the sound U, he gains a mental dexterity to forget totally his identity with the waking state experiences and to come to life in meditation consciously the entire identity with the ‘dreamer’ in him; so too, when he comes to the sound M, he is able to black out the entire state of plurality and arrive at a state of semi-conscious experience of all negation. Thereafter his spiritual growth is assured in proportion to the intensity of his pursuit, purity of his life and his intelligent sense of detachment.

      Even this practice of keeping oneself fully conscious and making the sounds A, U, and M each marching into the other and getting telescoped into themselves, is in itself a severe training for the mind at concentration. The conscious superimpositions unfolded, and again folded up as explained above, is an equally all-absorbing occupation for the entire intellectual capacity in us so that the true practitioner, if he be sincere and regular, gains in a very short time an infinite amount of integration both in his mind and in his intellectual equipments.

      Thereafter, the sensitivised instruments of the within become subtle in him so as to dare seek the Pure Awareness which, in the grosser three planes, illumines the objects and sustains the mirage personalities of the ‘waker’, the ‘dreamer’ and the ‘deep-sleeper’. The silence between two successive OMs is the point of concentration which the Yogi attempts to merge with, and experience thereby the infinite contents of one split second completely divorced from the past, and entirely free from the mental slavery to the future. To live thus dynamically free from within and from without, one second of a human life, is all that is needed to peep over the veils of ignorance and realise for ourselves eternally thereafter the True Nature of the Self, the Godhood.

      As we explained above, since OM represents a symbol for the waking, the dream and the deep-sleep states of consciousness, and since our entire life is the sum total of different experiences on all these three planes, OM, the symbol, represents ‘All This’. As OM is the symbol of the Infinite Reality that is behind the seeming multiplicity and painful plurality, it becomes self-evident that the Rishis were not illogical or deliberately mystical when they declared that OM is ‘all this universe’. Thank you for reading my article, I love to hear any ones opinion or suggestions. Good luck to everyone.

   

About the Author

Alka Kaushik is a freelance copywriter and journalist with a particular interest in health and wellness. She is M.phill in Political Science having deep interest in Vedic Sciences. For more related Articles kindly visit http://www.shreevedic.com

How to test outlet for power?

I have a cheap ohm meter or whatever it's called. Haven't used it in a long time. I have an outlet that does not work. I want to test the power supply to see if I have power. Do I just hold one piece of the tester to the hot and neutral wire? does it matter which one I hold where?
no..the outlet does not work. I want to test the power supply to the outlet to determine whether there is power there or not. If there is, I'll know it's just the outlet and it needs replaced.

Working with live electrical current can be hazardous. Do not attempt this measurement without the proper tools and safeguards. Always test your test equipment for proper operation before use.

Turn on any wall switches that may control an outlet. It is surprising the number of times an electrician will be called out for a non-functioning outlet only to solve it by flipping a switch. Another thing to check is that the circuit breaker or fuse is intact and that no GFCI outlet controlling the branch has tripped.

Testing an outlet can be as simple as plugging in a light to see if it goes on. Of course, always test your test equipment first. If that light doesn't work and you test an outlet and assume there is no current because the light doesn't go on, you may be in for a shock.

A more thorough way to test electrical outlets involves the use of an outlet tester. This device will not only indicate if the outlet has power, it will also indicate if the outlet is grounded and whether the hot and common wires are reversed.

The device could not be easier to use and costs only a few dollars. Generally, you plug the device in and note the pattern of the lights. The legend printed on the device describes what the lights indicate. Follow all of the instructions provided by the manufacturer.

If a outlet is identified as being miswired or does not have proper ground, you should not use the outlet until the problem is resolved. In the case of a miswired outlet or absent ground, the problem may occur at the problem outlet or somewhere else in the branch circuit. Do some detective work to determine the extent of the problem before attempting any repairs.

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