Quest Magazine

Originally printed in the Winter 2012 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: The Bradenton Theosophical Study Center . "The Golden Stairs." Quest  100. 1 (Winter 2012): 33-35.

by The Bradenton Theosophical Study Center

The Bradenton, Florida, Theosophical Study Center received official certification in June 2010 with seven members. From top: Andre Clewell, Jeanette Rothberg, Judith Snow-Clewell (secretary), Navin Vibhakar, Gregoria Halley, and Rachel Garibay-Wynnberry. (Not pictured is JoAnn Nair.) This article is a collaborative effort on their part.

In 1888, H. P. Blavatsky presented members of the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society with a brief set of precepts for living the Theosophical life. She called the precepts The Golden Stairs, and she said that it was taken "from the letter of a Master." Later The Golden Stairs was published and made available to the general membership.

As part of our opening at every meeting, the Theosophical study group of Bradenton, Florida, recites The Golden Stairs aloud. In order to internalize these ethical principles, we dedicated two meetings to group meditation on the meaning of each step. We shared aloud our thoughts and recorded them audially; then we selected some of the more memorable ideas and spliced them together into the following testament of our group exercise. The members of our group, which formed two and a half years ago, thought other Theosophists would find our exercise interesting.

At first we focused on the title itself. We thought that stairs represent an archetype symbolizing movement to higher levels. And of course they are architectural features in homes and buildings to move people from one level to another. Ladders represent a similar symbol, although they don't give the same foundational support as do stairs. So in choosing stairs as her teaching device, Blavatsky suggests the importance of a strong foundation to our spiritual striving, in which one level builds on the level below it.

Stairs suggest aspiration. Many songs use stairs as an image to beautify, lift, and inspire, such as in the lyric, "Let's build a stairway to the stars," and the gospel song "Walk Dem Golden Stairs." Stairs suggest ascension to higher spiritual life, steps to enlightenment, the beauty of spirit reaching for more.

In The Golden Stairs HPB urges us to a spiritually oriented life. Of course we may not always be moving up our stairs. Occasionally we take some steps down, but at some point in our many lifetimes on this earth we make a decision to stay on course and continue the upward movement.

The color gold, used in describing the stairs, is associated with that precious metal. It is warm and comfortable, pure, beautiful, bright, light, and valuable. We associate it with the sun, that life-giving entity, our Solar Logos.

The first step up the Golden Stairs is to lead a clean life. This is a broad ethic which in a sense includes all the rest. We associate being clean with being free from dirt. We wash our physical bodies regularly by bathing, but physical purity also includes healthful foods as well as low alcohol and chemical consumption. We can also wash our emotional bodies regularly by maintaining a peaceful nature. We can maintain mental cleanliness by removing the clutter and negative thoughts from our minds and replacing these with the virtues of life, including truthfulness, kindliness, and love. Our lives should also be free of hypocrisy and double standards. Meditation and the evening review (a daily recapitulation of one's conduct) are techniques to assist us on this step, both of which help us make decisions based on the higher good for ourselves and others.

The next step is to have an open mind. The symbol of a funnel above our heads is appropriate here, "open at the top." Also the idiom "living outside of the box" could be applied. It is the idea that we are not closed in our thinking, locked into old values or old life scripts. We are open to alternatives. We are secure in the awareness that we don't have all the answers. We consider others' beliefs and other aspects, sift through them for common ideas, and consider if we want a shift in perspective or maybe see that we have it right already. An open mind is balanced and free from prejudice. We listen to another's point of view, willing to walk in their shoes and seeing different ideas with new eyes.

A pure heart is the stair step of love. It is living with right motivations, living more from the heart and intuition than from the mind. The heart of a person is that person's very essence. So in our emotions, thoughts, and actions we ask ourselves if we operating with pure motivations, true altruism, and agape, or if we are putting conditions on our giving. A pure heart involves listening to ourselves and being honest about our purposes and intentions. The quote from Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address comes to mind: "With malice toward none, with charity for all..."

An eager intellect is a mind striving to know, to understand. It is a mind asking questions and seeking answers and willing to change attitudes. It is a mind searching for knowledge through reading, experiencing, and searching from various teachers, seeking insights in order to establish the code by which we live. It is a mind curious about the world, people, science, and religion. It is a mind seeking to discriminate between the real and unreal.

An unveiled spiritual perception involves understanding the causes of events. In Theosophy it is piercing through to the buddhic or intuitional level. The raja yoga method of concentration, meditation, and contemplation leads us to this soul level of comprehension, bringing realization of universal principles.

Brotherliness to all (as some versions read for this step) refers back to the great teaching that we are all differentiated from one Source; therefore we are all related and presumably will all go back to that Source. In all our actions we have to take this into account because in reality every action we take has an effect on everybody else. This is expressed well in the concept of karma. In life this brotherliness manifests as respect for one another even if we disagree, as kindness and fairness to all, as awareness of others' feelings, and as trying to be a blessing to all we meet.

Readiness to give and receive advice and instruction has two parts, giving and receiving. Both are important, and the critical point is how we give and receive advice and instruction and when. When we give it, we should do so carefully and cautiously, humbly, gently, but most importantly when asked. In receiving advice, an open mind would be an important quality, because anyone can be our teacher. In fact we are one another's teachers in life.

Courageous endurance of personal injustice requires one to consider that there are three possible reasons for what one conceives as an injustice. One is that it is the result of karma, which is balancing out from previous thoughts or actions. A second reason is that the injustice could be a test of one's physical, emotional, and mental equanimity. A third possibility is that one is making a mountain out of a molehill, in which case one's lower-ego touchiness and inferiority are on display. Since life is a school and we have lessons to learn, we can ask our higher Self, "What does this mean, why is this happening, what thoughts or beliefs are being triggered?" And we should do what we can to remedy the situation without harm to ourselves or others.

A brave declaration of principles and a valiant defense of those who are unjustly attacked are closely allied ethics. They are movingly represented in this saying attributed to the German pastor Martin Niemller in regard to the Nazis: "First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me."

If we have principles, we must do our best to defend them in regard to ourselves and others. In many instances, and in many countries, this can be very dangerous and may mean loss of occupation, life, and liberty.

A constant eye to the idea of human progression and perfection which the secret science depicts is living with a positive attitude. It is looking for the glass to be half-full rather than half-empty. Great progress has been made in the evolutionary development of humanity. Surrounding ourselves with books and magazine that acquaint us with human progress help us keep this positive attitude, which in itself contributes to positive human progress. There are many heroes and heroines in the world; there always have been and always will be, because human beings are guided by higher beings who have a peek at the Greater Plan. By daily meditation on the virtues, we attune to that Plan and help to manifest it on earth. Meditation also helps us live with joy and gratitude, thereby disseminating it to others.

These are the steps that lead to the Temple of Divine Wisdom, to the greater knowledge and wisdom held by the Source of which each of us is a spark. This doesn't mean that this wisdom is out there somewhere beyond our reach. It is wisdom to which we all awaken as we live according to the precepts of The Golden Stairs.

The Golden Stairs 

Behold the truth before you: a clean life, an open mind, a pure heart, an eager intellect, an unveiled spiritual perception, a brotherliness for one's co-disciple, a readiness to give and receive advice and instruction, a loyal sense of duty to the Teacher, a willing obedience to the behests of Truth, once we have placed our confidence in, and believe that Teacher to be in possession of it; a courageous endurance of personal injustice, a brave declaration of principles, a valiant defence of those who are unjustly attacked, and a constant eye to the ideal of human progression and perfection which the secret science (Gupta-Vidy?) depicts—these are the golden stairs up the steps of which the learner may climb to the Temple of Divine Wisdom.

—H.P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings, 12:503 (cf. 591).

Originally printed in the Winter 2012 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Tulku, Tarthang . "Making Mind the Matter." Quest  100. 1 (Winter 2012): 28-30, 40.

by Tarthang Tulku

As the members of our community go about their work, they try to keep the goal of understanding the teachings close to their hearts and minds. We are looking for ways to make the Dharma, the Buddha's teaching, relevant to our minds and to explore the activity of our minds in light of the Dharma.

Taking work as Dharma practice gives us the opportunity to investigate experience as it happens. What matters is learning to identify self and self-image in operation, always going on to ask another question instead of settling for a particular understanding. Here are some suggestions, based on my own observations, on ways to do this.

Examining the Senses. It may seem that our senses operate in a neutral way, but that is only because we have not learned to look closely. Just as science has learned to investigate in depth the atoms and molecules that make up matter, so we can learn to look at how we see and hear and feel and know. Rather than focusing on what appears to the senses, we can be aware of the activity of sensing, and of the way we react to what we sense.

There are many ways to conduct this inquiry. For instance, instead of focusing on objects, we can be aware of space as the background from which objects appear. Instead of accepting the way things are, we can determine how appearance develops through a series of transitions that unfold in time. Instead of accepting the identity of what is sensed, we can ask how our own reactions and sense of self-identity contribute to the feel and flavor of appearance.

The Changing River. Like a river, experience is never the same from one moment to the next, but we tend to ignore change and emphasize similarity. Insisting that the past has gone and the future has not yet come, we turn the present into something static: a fixed and rigid identity. To counter this tendency, we can focus in our experience on how things change from moment to moment. Right now I think I am the same person that I was last year or five minutes ago, but in fact the mind, feelings, and desires are constantly changing. Instead of insisting on sameness, can we simply appreciate the subtle differences?

We sometimes worry that we can't see the forest for the trees, but the opposite is also true: Once we have identified the forest, we find it hard to notice the twigs, the leaves, the branches, the birds, and the rustling underfoot. The Buddhist system known as Abhidharma offers the tools for analyzing subtle changes in the mind and learning to notice different levels of cognition and perception. Mantrayana teachings, which use the science of mantra to illuminate the path to enlightenment, and the samadhis, the body of knowledge that focuses on conduct, take this analysis to still more subtle levels. But daily experience can be a preparation for these more advanced approaches. Right now we can notice changes in experience and trace the consequences of such changes, and we can experiment with modifying or initiating changes on our own.

Beyond Samsaric (Delusory) Mind. Beginning meditators usually focus on calming the mind or simply observing experience. This is natural, since our thoughts and imagination give us so much trouble. But tending to mind and mental events the way a shepherd tends his sheep is inherently limiting. We may meditate in this way for years without a significant change in how mind operates. Ironically, the self that fixates on its mental projections knows little about how those projections arise and operate. When we always meditate in this way—in preventive mode—we cannot add to this store of knowledge.

Instead of staying focused on the content of illusion mind, we can investigate the body of mind. To really succeed at this means cultivating samadhi and prajña(transcendent awareness), but we can also conduct an initial and rewarding investigation in the midst of ordinary experience. All we need to do is learn to recognize our own projections and preconceptions in operation. Like a spider who gets caught in its own web, we are constantly getting trapped in structures that the mind sets up. If we can see this pattern in operation, we can become more aware of how the mind works, and this will make it easier to work with mind itself.

Multiple Experience. Whatever we experience, there is also the one who experiences and interprets. As we interpret, we are also offering a self-interpretation. Like our sensings, our interpretations go in two directions at once, and we can practice being aware of both at the same time.

We can also go further into the complications of mind. As mind projects outward, it is confirming preconceptions, adjusting its own role and activity, and assigning and refining meaning. In every moment of experience, it goes off in many directions, like a ray of light split into many colors by a prism. It is not easy to keep track of all this, but at least we can make a start. Sense experience is a good place to look, because it is so immediate. We can develop a sensitivity to the manifold directionality of experience that might otherwise be too complicated to observe.

Following Experience into Aliveness. Although investigating our own experience leads us into the realm of interpretation, it does not have to lead us away from the richness that experience holds. Interpretation is just another layer of experience, with its own aliveness. Similarly, minding, sensing, cognizing, and identifying are all richly alive, each in its own way. A sound is made and a meaning pronounced; self-image and identity emerge to name and define what has been experienced; the senses gather together to make more meanings. It is a mistake to think that all of this happens after experience has taken place. Instead, each of these steps is part of the living experience, available to inquiry.

If we let the aliveness of mind's interpretations and mindings guide us toward an understanding of how experience is identified and assigned significance, we can take a further step, noticing how mind's way of patterning repeats itself again and again. Different features appear, but the rhetoric of minding and sensing stays the same. Even in dreams, the rhythm of mind in operation is never once interrupted.

Staying with the Unknown. Like quicksilver, the mind is never at rest, and like quicksilver it slips away when we try to take hold of it or penetrate beneath its surface. Always sensing, always interpreting, mind goes its own way. It makes meaning even where there is no meaning. What resists being assigned meaning, what stays unknown, is dismissed as irrelevant and of no value.

One way to challenge these tendencies is to let the unknown stay unknown. At once certain aspects of experience become more accessible: balance and neutrality, being open, and allowing. Staying with the experience of not knowing allows us to ask questions that would otherwise be dismissed. For instance, does form arise from ignorance or from wisdom? The mind at once leaps in with an answer, but this is only at the level of stories. If we can let ourselves not know the answer, we can explore the question at a deeper level, asking within experience instead of taking a stand on experience. We can see how well we understand mind itself, and we can ask how mind relates to mind.

Intrinsic Certainty. As we go about minding our stories, what are we certain of? Can we investigate this question without depending on stories? Can we go to a depth of certainty deeper than any story, deeper than the conditions we set for understanding? These questions pose a challenge. As long as we rely on identification and interpretation we may not even be able to say what they mean. Still, once we discover a way to start looking, it does not matter where we head. Every direction leads us into the depth of mind.

Knowing Our Solidity. Beneath the particular story in effect right now, we rely on an identity that feels solid. We simply know we are one mind, one consciousness. If we can go to that level, where everything seems solid, the notions and assumptions we use to shape experience—our ordinary way of thinking—may look different. Even our ideas about awareness, mind, consciousness, and experience may present themselves differently, revealing other features of mind.

Caring Brings Understanding. To understand, we must care. When we care, we are not disturbed by the obstacles that arise on the path to understanding, and we easily overcome emotionality. The Dharma tells us that if we love and care for knowledge, then by taking the path of knowledge, we come to know how to love and care for ourselves. We take responsibility for what we can bring about in this life, and we set about eliminating confusion and other hindrances that prevent mind and self from functioning at their full potential.

This kind of caring does not depend on being ready to undertake serious study of the Dharma. It is enough to see that we are the cause of our own experience, for then we can look for ways to cultivate whatever is positive. If we make it our aim to contribute and to experience as fully as possible, we will inevitably realize that our own knowledge is not sufficient to guide us, and we will explore ways to improve it. If we feel some connection to the Dharma lineage, we may recognize that today there are fewer and fewer examples of individuals who manifest profound knowledge in their own lives. In our own small way, we may resolve to do what we can to become examples of knowledge and caring for our friends, through simple acts such as kind words and helping gestures.

Although it is hard to claim that we can manifest complete honesty and compassion toward ourselves and others, we can imitate the examples of those we admire and whose lives we study. Whether we call this working for the Dharma or working for ourselves, we live in a way that does not waste the opportunities we have been given. We shape our own karma.

Mind is always dealing with the matter at hand, the "stuff" out of which its stories are constructed. But mind matters more than the subject-matter of its stories. If we care about knowledge, we will see this, because real knowledge happens at a level different from the stories we tell. If we care about ourselves, we will tire of our suffering and realize through our inquiry that we could do it differently, that mind could wake up from the stories it tells and recognize them as fictions.

Mind is always asking, "What's the matter?" But if we let go of what matters to mind, if we let mind be what matters, we can release ourselves from the hold of what mind tells us matters most. In time, we may realize what is the matter with mind. If what matters to mind has never happened, the problems we take so seriously dissolve. The rules of the game display less gravity; the limits on the range of positions available to us fall away. We can tell the story of how mind manufactures reality, or the story of how we have arrived at realization. Either way, it doesn't matter.

Tarthang Tulku is a visionary Tibetan lama, born in Tibet and trained by the greatest teachers of the previous century. He has lived in the U.S. since 1969, learning how Westerners think and act and experimenting with ways to transmit the Buddha's teachings in a new world. He is the founder of the Tibetan Aid Project, the Nyingma Institute, the Odiyan Country Center, Dharma Publishing, and most recently the Mangalam Research Center for Buddhist Languages. His books include Time, Space, and Knowledge: A New Vision of Reality; Skillful Means: Gentle Ways to Successful Work; and Gesture of Balance: A Guide to Self-Healing and Meditation. This article is adapted from his book Milking the Painted Cow: The Creative Power of Mind and the Shape of Reality in Light of the Buddhist Tradition, copyright  © 2005 by Dharma Publishing. Reprinted with permission.

Originally printed in the Winter 2012 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard . "What Is Reality?" Quest  100. 1 (Winter 2012): 25-27.

 by Richard Smoley

Since the word "reality" is bandied about in so many different ways, it seems appropriate to step back and ask just what reality is.

The answers to this question can be broadly divided into two types. One is the mystical view that only what is eternal and unchanging is real. Although this idea may look highly "Eastern" to us today, it actually has a long and distinguished ancestry in Western philosophy—for example, in Plato. He discusses it in a number of his works, but the best-known account appears in The Republic, where he contends that, in the world of sensory appearances, everything is relative. Something is beautiful in one context, ugly in another; an act that is moral in one set of circumstances is immoral in another, and so on. None of these things, then, can be counted as really having these characteristics; in a sense they both do and do not have them. As Plato's mouthpiece, Socrates, says, "It is impossible to form a stable conception of any of them as either being what it is, or not being what it is, or being both, or neither. . . . The welter of things which the masses conventionally regard as beautiful and so on mill around somewhere between unreality and perfect reality."

There is a semantic difficulty here that is often overlooked. The word in Plato's Greek that is usually translated as "reality" is ousía, literally, "being." If we understand this point, Plato's reasoning becomes much clearer. How can you say something "is" when you find that, in respect to anything you can say about it, it both "is" and "is not"? How can you say something is green when it looks green in one light and yellow or gray in another?

Nonetheless, the English terms are real and reality, and their etymology suggests how we native speakers of English view the matter. These words derive from the Latin res, "thing." In English, reality is inextricably bound up with thingness. We see as much in the term real estate. When you buy a house, you don't care that the materials composing it were not a house in the past and someday in the (let us hope remote) future will no longer be a house. Nor do you care that in a sense the house both is and is not white. What matters is that it is a house you can see and touch and live in now, and that the plumbing is in good shape.

Property matters aside, in the day-to-day world there are five criteria that something has to satisfy in order for us to accept it as real: 

1. It must be perceptible to the senses in a stereoscopic way. That is, it must resemble what it is to all the senses and from all angles. Once when I was young, I was in my room around twilight, when I glanced across the hall into my father's bedroom and saw what looked like a dead mouse in the middle of the floor. I was puzzled, because I knew we didn't have mice in the house. I looked at the object for some time, trying to figure out what it might be, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not see it as anything other than a mouse. Finally I got up to take a closer look at it. I found it was a crumpled-up piece of tissue paper that had missed the wastebasket. In this case, what had looked like a mouse proved, from a more comprehensive point of view, to be otherwise. So it was not really a mouse.
2. The object must have a certain stability. It can't appear and vanish or change form in unpredictable ways.
3. It must be publicly accessible. Anyone who is present must be able to perceive it. Anyone here principally means a sane, rational, sober adult. The testimony of children, the insane, and people who are intoxicated is viewed with much more suspicion.
4. It must be observed in waking life. Objects in dreams may appear to have many of the characteristics I've described, but even so they are not accounted as real.
5. It must obey our preconceptions about what is and is not possible. If you say you saw something that is supposed not to exist, your testimony will be seriously doubted. You may even doubt your own senses, the power of whose evidence is often weaker than that of our preconceptions. In the case above, I doubted that what I saw was a mouse because of my (correct) belief that we didn't have mice.

 Anything that fits these criteria will generally be taken as real. If it fails to satisfy even some of these requirements, it will raise doubts. Take the typical sighting of a ghost. The apparition may not be entirely stable: it may appear and disappear suddenly. It may not seem substantial to all the senses: you may be able to see it but may also find that your hand passes through it without resistance. It may not be perceptible to everyone. One person may see a ghost standing in a corner of the room, but others who are present may not. Finally and perhaps most important, the existence of ghosts is highly disputed. Even if the experience satisfies all the other criteria—say there are several people present who see the same thing—it will probably be doubted later by those who were not there (and maybe by some who were) on the grounds that there is no such thing as ghosts.

The criteria I've given seem to be more or less universal, prevailing over most if not all periods and cultures. What is accounted as real must, among other things, accord with our preconceptions. Nonetheless, the content of our preconceptions may differ according to time and place, sometimes wildly. Many cultures today give far more credence than we do to such things as ghosts, spirits good and evil, possession, witchcraft, and similar things. So, for that matter, did Western civilization five hundred years ago. It's strange to read court testimonies from the era of the witch hunts and encounter a man who confesses to turning himself into a toad—along with a judge and jury who accept his testimony.

We can see how these criteria work by examining cases where the reality of a thing is subject to doubt. In his book Beyond Telepathy, the parapsychologist Andrija Puharich tells of a study of the Indian rope trick. Long a mainstay of fakirs, the trick runs so relentlessly counter to our views of what is possible—and even of what sleight of hand can accomplish—that some have denied it has ever been done at all.

Puharich describes a demonstration of this trick arranged by some scientists, who collected several hundred people to watch a fakir put on the show. Puharich reports: "They saw the Fakir throw a coil of rope in the air and saw a small boy climb up the rope and disappear. Subsequently dismembered parts of this small boy came tumbling to the ground; the Fakir gathered them up in the basket, ascended the rope, and both the boy and the Fakir came down smiling. It is astonishing that several hundred people witnessed this demonstration and agreed in general on the details as described. There was not a single person present in the crowd who could deny these facts."

But the scientists had also set a movie camera going to record the trick. According to Puharich, later, when the film was developed, "it was found that the Fakir had walked into the center of the group of people and thrown the rope into the air, but that it had fallen to the ground. The Fakir and his boy assistant had stood motionless by the rope throughout the rest of the demonstration. The rope did not stay in the air, the boy did not ascend the rope. In other words, everyone had witnessed the same hallucination. Presumably the hallucination originated with the Fakir as the agent or sender. At no time in the course of the demonstration did the Fakir tell the audience what they were going to see. The entire demonstration was carried out in silence.^"

How does this fit with our criteria for reality? Certainly the idea that someone might throw a rope into the air and climb up it runs contrary to our preconceptions of how the world is, so this alone would give cause for suspicion. What proved the trick to be a hallucination was the testimony of the camera, which gave a more stereoscopic view, in this case presumably because, unlike the minds of the spectators, it was not prone to suggestion.

For those who might trust in the camera, which is supposedly incapable of deceit, I might cite a phenomenon discussed on the Internet: orbs. To quote author Daniel Pinchbeck, writing on the Reality Sandwich Web site:

Orbs are best known as those mysterious balls of light that have appeared on digital photographs for the last fifteen years, though some claim they can see them with the naked eye as well. Orbs have spawned an enthusiastic subculture of people who believe the blobby wisps are not dust particles or lens anomalies, but angels, spirits, other-dimensional beings and so on...Most people first discover orbs when they are trying to photograph something else—friends at a party, a politician, their cat.

In this case, it would appear to be the camera that is suffering from the delusion. Again the doubt is triggered by our preconceptions: people generally don't believe there are orbs of light floating around the air. Moreover, orbs are not stable; they are evanescent; and they don't stand up very well to stereoscopic examination. Sometimes they show up on camera, sometimes they can be seen with the naked eye, but a rigorous criterion for reality would demand that they appear to both the camera and the naked eye and, moreover, appear in much the same way to both. A person who sees an orb, or takes a picture of one that cannot be explained as some fluke of lighting, may not be persuaded that what he saw was unreal. (I suspect that they can be connected with thigles or tikles, which is simply the Tibetan Buddhist name for this phenomenon, usually described as droplike and regarded as a side-effect of certain meditative practices.) But someone who hears about it secondhand will probably be much more suspicious.

Set down on paper, these criteria may seem utterly obvious and pedestrian. So they should. They underpin practically every move we make. They have been established as a solid basis for enabling us to function on the plane of existence we call the physical world. They have been hashed out over millennia of human life; no attempt at vindication on my part would validate them any further, and no attempt at refutation would weaken our reliance on them. Even so, looking at them as a whole, we might notice one startling fact: a great deal of what we experience is not "real" in this sense, including thoughts, dreams, and fantasies, and even ideas and concepts. If we confine ourselves to the ordinary, common-sense view, we have no explanation for these things. Indiscriminately using blanket terms such as "imagination" and "hallucination" are often intended to abort the discussion rather than clarify it.

The mystical traditions of the world, by contrast, do have elaborate systems of thought to help us understand these realms and what they might mean. But they argue something more. They say that what is real is not experience in any form—because that is subject to relentless change—but rather that which experiences—which does remain eternal and unchanging. But if we confine ourselves to a narrow view of reality, these insights will be of no use to us.

Adapted from The Dice Game of Shiva: How Consciousness Creates the Universe (New World Library), copyright © 2009 by Richard Smoley.

Originally printed in the Winter 2012 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Cleary, Jane . "OM: Its Purpose and Meaning." Quest  100. 1 (Winter 2012): 21-24.

by Jane Cleary

The word OM is probably more likely to be recognized by its symbol, even though it is the sound of OM that is the point of focus whenever it is used. It comes from the Hindu scriptures known as the Vedas, which are as old as the Indian culture itself.

What is the language and derivation of OM? The word is in Sanskrit, the language of the Vedas, which according to tradition originated at the same time as the Vedas. OM as both a sound and a written symbol is deeply revered in the Hindu tradition, a fact that can be readily understood once its meaning and power are known. The repetition of the word produces a sound that emanates in the form of a benign and beneficent resonance. The symbol, when reverentially visualized, creates a steadying and calming influence on the mind. Moreover, it has these effects even when the meaning may not be fully understood.

In Sanskrit, the word OM is composed of three letters: "A," "U," and "M." When added together, these three letters become two, because according to the rules of Sanskrit grammar for combining vowels and consonants, "A" plus "U" combine into the letter "O." There is nothing mysterious about this, because if you were to sequentially repeat "A" and "U" over and over again, you will find that the sound "O" naturally occurs as a result of this blending. This is followed by the pronunciation of the last letter, "M."

Vedic tradition teaches that the sounds are all created with an intended purpose, so it is important to follow the rules of pronunciation and intonation, because the resonance is intimately connected with the meaning (and the meaning is also deeply purposeful). In everyday life we all know and have felt how music, whether it is discordant and jarring or pleasing and harmonious, affects our minds. Similarly, pronunciation of Vedic sounds and words such as OM should always be done according to traditional instructions in order to avoid discordance or negative resonance as well as to effect the intended result. Indeed repeating and focusing on this syllable will tend to resolve any existing mental discordance or disturbance. As will be explained further on, when intoned with knowledge of its meaning, it causes the intoner to become aware of his or her ever-present, abiding, complete nature, which is free from all limitations of all types at all times. For these reasons, it is important to understand that in repeating OM one should not break it down into its component three letters but pronounce it as two letters. Nor should one elongate or drag the sound out when chanting it.

In order to appreciate the meaning of OM it is necessary to analyze the nature of words. All letters or characters in any language represent sounds, which, when put together in various sequences, create words or names that are in turn associated with forms. For example, in English the word "pot" consists of three sounds put together to create a specific sound that identifies an object. This collection of sounds is always recognized by those who understand that language to be attached to that type of form. The word is never apart from the object in that when someone is talking about a pot, he or she is constrained to use that specific word to identify the object's form and function. In this sense, the word, its meaning, and its object are inseparable.

On the basis of this explanation, what object is the word OM attached to? What function and form should the mind wrap itself around when it hears the word OM? Why are these three letters and their consequent blend of sounds so meaningful and important? And how do you make use of it?

To answer these questions the word has to be broken down again. "A" is the sound that originates from the back of the throat. Generally, it is the first sound that is uttered by all human beings when the mouth is first opened, and therefore it represents beginning. It is followed by the sound "U," which occurs as soon as the mouth moves into the next position from a completely open state, so "U" represents a combination of stasis and change. The sound "M" is formed when the lips are brought together and the mouth is fully closed, so it represents the end. When these sounds are added together, OM means "beginning" plus "middle" plus "end."

In sum, any and all sounds, no matter how different they may be or in what language they are spoken, all fall within the range of these three. Three letters, representing beginning, middle, and end, symbolize creation itself, which consists of constant beginnings, periods of stasis and change, and endings. Hence all of the varieties of sounds and their respective objects in all languages are encompassed by the utterance of this single syllable, OM. The formation and use of the word OM are ingenious, because they include the entire universe in one syllable. At the same time, by the utterance of OM one is able to appreciate and recognize Ishwara (a Sanskrit word that means "God"), who is the source of the beginning, middle, and end of the universe.

Any type of creation can only take place if there is a conscious cause with the intelligent capacity and material to create it. In everyday life this fact is obvious. In terms of the entire creation, it is also abundantly clear that a universe cannot exist without these two causes. Unlike most perspectives involving a creator and creation, the Vedic tradition, particularly Vedanta (whose name means "the end of the Vedas"), teaches that Ishwara is both the intelligent and material cause of this universe, just as you are the intelligent and material cause of your dreams. And just as you are the beginning, middle, and end of that dream, in the same way Ishwara as the intelligent mastermind of the universe permeates all aspects and phases of it and everything that exists within it. Unlike you in the dream, however, Ishwara is in control of this universe.

Because Ishwara pervades the universe, all beings and things in the universe are nonseparate from Ishwara. This means that as an expression of Ishwara you essentially consist of the same existing, conscious, and complete nature. Therefore it behooves you to acknowledge and honor Ishwara as well as to acknowledge your own true nature. A simple way to appreciate Ishwara is by the recitation of OM. This is indeed is the intent and vision of the Vedic culture. In order to more fully grasp this vision, since OM is a sound that is made and arises from silence, appreciating the silent basis for sound is also helpful.

Silence is the basis for all sound, and silence exists before the sound arises. It exists while the sound is occurring and will still be there after the sound is gone. It also remains totally unaffected as sounds arise, exist, and recede. This means that silence is unchanging even as the sounds change; it is ever-present and therefore timeless. Like all other sounds, when OM is pronounced it emerges as a sound from silence, but because of its meaning it helps the reciter to tune into the silence in way that no other sound can. In the recitation of OM, first there is silence, then the sound of OM, and then silence before the next repetition. Continued repetition in this manner thus encompasses the universe and then points back to the silence that is the basis of OM.

Silence exists, but since silence does not have a form and by its very definition no sound can be associated with it, we are left with the conclusion that silence must be the very nature of existence itself. Existence is without qualifiers of any kind, yet it is ever-present and will never cease to be.

Put another way, existence is recognized as the eternal "isness." The one thing that all objects, people, events, thoughts share is their "isness." We say, "The pot is," "The chair is," "The mind is," "The body is." Nothing can be unless existence is present first; therefore it is that because of which everything can and does exist. Furthermore, even though everything changes and ultimately goes away, existence does not change or disappear, and neither does silence.

Silence would also have to be nonseparate from consciousness because consciousness does not possess or make any sound, yet it is present and aware at all times. This is the same consciousness that is found in one's mind, and it is ever—silent, allowing all of the sounds of the universe, mental and physical, to manifest.

So where is the silence that is nonseparate from existence and consciousness to be found? The universe is contained in space, which itself is seemingly all-pervasive. But space also has a limitation in that, as portrayed by science, it too explodes into being and then implodes and collapses upon itself. Moreover, it derives its "isness" from existence. But neither existence nor consciousness is similarly dependent, and there is no place where existence and consciousness are not found—that is, there is no place or time where either of these is absent. The scope of existence and consciousness contains everything, and by virtue of its all-pervasive nature nothing is apart or away from it. From the perspective of the manifest universe, that enlivening and all-encompassing existence-consciousness is Ishwara. If one looks past the universe, that silent existence-consciousness still remains. It is unchanged and unaffected by the presence or absence of the universe or of space itself. Hence it pervades space while at the same time it is bigger and beyond space.

The universe is an effect that cannot be separate from its cause, just as cloth as an effect cannot be apart from cotton, its material cause. The universe contains everything. Therefore whatever contains the universe must also contain everything that can ever be achieved within it and must ultimately be superior to all that the universe contains. This is what is meant by the word "Brahman," which, for the purposes of this article, can be simply defined as that which is the biggest. Space is not as big as Brahman because space has Brahman as its basis.

Thus this silent existence-consciousness is not dependent on space or time, and even though both are found within space, they must, as we have seen, necessarily extend past it. So Brahman and existence-consciousness are similarly described in relation to space. Neither of these is divisible into parts, and because they cannot be distinguished, they must be one and the same. Brahman is the one, indivisible, silent basis that is all-existent, ever-aware consciousness. Because of its all-pervasive presence it is wholly complete and its fullness is always abiding as a silent presence. Thus in the recitation of OM one recognizes the universe as well as the ultimate source, which is Brahman.

What, then, is the impact of this OM recitation on the mind? Whenever a person's mind is fully absorbed in a goal—whether it is a certain ideal or person or object—that the person believes will make life complete, then he or she will pursue that goal with full force, with all the energies, resources, and time that can be mustered. Such an engaged mind is fully absorbed and focused. This is what is meant by the Sanskrit saying Yatra yatra mano yati, tatra tatra samadhayah, which means that wherever the mind goes is the place in which it is in samadhi (that is, a totally fulfilled sense of absorption). Such a mind is so wholly and fully identified with that pursuit that its own identity is often subsumed. While this form of absorption can give a person a sense of well-being and contentment, such satisfaction cannot last because it is always focused on an object or person that is subject to change at some point in time. A satisfaction that changes can never be truly and ultimately satisfying. Yet, by the same token, all that anyone ever truly wants is a lasting satisfaction that is not subject to the peaks and valleys and bumps in the road of life. This type of satisfaction can only be achieved by a mind that is focused on and absorbed in an unchanging, ever-fulfilling end. That end is OM, because as we have seen, it encompasses the entire universe but is not limited to or by it. When one's mind takes this in full measure, one naturally appreciates that nothing is left out, left over, or left behind. Such a mind is now identified with Ishwara—that is, Brahman as Abiding Fullness. Grasping that vision translates to owning everything while being free from everything and remaining full and complete in oneself.

The recitation of OM is useful in many ways, as expressed by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita 17.23—26, where, in keeping with the Vedic tradition, he advocates its recitation (with the syllables tat and sat added) at the beginning of rituals and charitable and religious acts). But for a person intent on liberation, the recitation becomes a means of focusing and purifying the mind to whatever extent and in whatever way a person requires. This is known as antah karana suddhi. As the word OM is repeated, whether in a meditative setting or in the midst of everyday life, once you see the meaning you are tapping into its essence, which in fact is nonseparate from and never apart from the Creator, Brahman, the universe or yourself.

This Vedic vision is presented over and over again in the Upanishads, for example:

OM, the word, is all this. A clear explanation of it [is the following]. All that is past, present, and future is verily OM. That which is beyond the triple conception of time is also truly OM. (Mandukyopanishad 1.1.1) 

O Satyakama, this very Brahman, known as Para [attributeless] Brahman and the Apara [associated with names and forms] Brahman is but this OM. Therefore the illumined knower attains either of the two through this one means alone. (Prasnopanishad 5.2)

One should meditate on the syllable OM, the Udgitha, for one sings the Udgitha beginning with OM. Of this the explanation follows. The essence of these beings is the earth. The essence of the earth is water. The essence of water is vegetation. The essence of vegetation is man. The essence of man is speech. The essence of speech is Rk. The essence of Rk is Saman. The essence of Saman is Udgitha. (Chandogyopanishad 1.1.1-2)

The goal which all Vedas proclaim, which all penances declare, and desiring which they lead the life of Brahmacharya, I tell it to thee in brief—it is OM. This syllable is Brahman, this syllable is also the highest. Having known this syllable, whatever one desires, one gets that. This support is the best, this support is the absolute. Knowing this support one is worshipped in the world of Brahma. (Kathopanishad 2.15—17)

Being born in various forms this self exists within the mind where all the nerves are clustered just as the spokes are clustered on the hub of the chariot wheel. Meditate upon this self in this manner with the help of OM. May there be an auspicious end for you for going the other side of ignorance. (Mundakopanishad 2.2.6)

One should contemplate: OM is Brahman; all this universe, perceived and imagined, is OM...A Brahmana proceeding to recite the Veda intending "Let me obtain the Brahman" says "OM." Assuredly he attains Brahman. (Taittiriyopanishad 1.8.1)

This vision may be recognized in all of the verses or mantras when the meaning of OM is properly and fully understood. It is something like looking at a multifaceted diamond. You can keep looking at it from many different angles, but you are always looking at the same thing. And in this case, it does not get any better than that!

Jane (Janani) Cleary studied under Swami Dayananda Saraswati, a renowned teacher and scholar in Advaita Vedanta and Sanskrit, who conducted an accredited course of study at Sandeepany Sadhanalaya at Mumbai, India, in 1978. Since her return to the United States she has been teaching Vedanta classes in affiliation with Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, and for the past thirteen years has taught the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads at the TS Lodge in Deerfield Beach, Florida.