Aum bhur bhuvah svah
Tat savitur varenyam
Bhargo devasya dhimahi
Dhiyo yo nah pracodayat

We meditate on the transcendental glory of the Deity Supreme, who is inside the heart of the earth, inside the life of the sky, and inside the soul of Heaven. May He stimulate and illumine our minds.

There can be no mantra more powerful than the mother of all mantras, Aum, the cosmic sound. A yogi or spiritual figure hears it self-generated in the inmost recesses of his heart. When you begin to hear it, you can be certain that you are far advanced in the spiritual life. Your God-realisation will no longer remain a mere cry in the wilderness. The day of your Self-realisation is fast approaching.

We call Aum anahata nada, the unstruck or soundless sound. We use the word ‘soundless’, but that word is an infinite understatement. The cosmic sound is infinitely more powerful than the loudest sound that we can produce; yet it is inaudible to the ordinary ears. If we hear the soundless sound inside our heart, it is infinitely more powerful than the loudest sound we can produce. In softness there can be the greatest dynamism. Sometimes I talk in a fatherly way, with utmost concern and affection. I am talking in a very soft, delicate voice, but at that time I am using my absolutely most dynamic power. I may be smiling and offering all kinds of affection, but in my softness there is volcanic power.

If you repeat the word Aum every day for two, three or four hours, you will get the vibration of that sound within your heart. You will not have to create this sound inwardly, but by repeating Aum outwardly, the inner sound automatically comes. When the soundless sound is vibrating constantly in your heart, your whole body is surcharged with divine knowledge, divine light, divine power. If you practise only that mantra, that is enough to take you to God.

Aum is the symbol of God, the Supreme. It is God’s sound. Every second God is creating Himself anew inside Aum. This sound He uses to create the world; this sound He uses to preserve the world; this sound He uses to transform the world.

Aum is the soundless sound. It is the vibration of the Supreme. It is a single, indivisible, ineffable sound. When we hear the soundless sound within, when we identify with it, when we live within it, we can be freed from the fetters of ignorance and realise the Supreme within and without.

When we chant Aum, what actually happens is that we bring down peace and light from above and create a universal harmony within and without us. When we repeat Aum, both our inner and our outer beings become inspired and surcharged with divine light and aspiration. Aum has no equal. Aum has infinite power. Just by repeating Aum, we can realise God.

When you chant Aum, try to feel that God is climbing up and down within you. Hundreds of seekers in India have realised God simply by repeating Aum. No matter how grave one’s sin is, if one chants Aum a few times from the depth of one’s heart, God’s omnipotent Compassion will forgive and redeem the seeker. In the twinkling of an eye, the power of Aum transforms darkness into light, ignorance into knowledge and death into Immortality.

How to Chant Aum

There are various ways to chant Aum. When we chant Aum with tremendous soul’s power, what we actually do is enter into the cosmic vibration where the creation is in perfect harmony and where the cosmic Dance is being danced by the Absolute. If we chant Aum soulfully, we become one with the cosmic Dance; we become one with God the Creator, God the Preserver and God the Transformer. Aum is at once the Life, the Body and the Breath of God. This is what you can feel when you chant Aum.

If you get an attack on the emotional vital plane and wrong thoughts, wrong ideas, wrong vibrations enter into you, repeat Aum or the name of the Supreme as fast as possible. Do not chant slowly. When you are trying to cleanse your mind of impurities, you must chant as if you were running to catch a moving train.

When you do japa, do not prolong your chanting too much. If you prolong the syllable Aum, you will not have the time to chant five hundred or six hundred times. Just say the syllable in a normal but soulful way so that you will get the vibration. Practise it aloud, not silently. Let the sound of the mantra vibrate even in your physical ears and permeate your entire body.

We chant Aum aloud because when the outer mind is convinced, we get greater joy and a greater sense of achievement. But if we know how to enter into the original source of the sound, which is inside the heart, then we need not chant aloud. It is quite possible to utter the word Aum silently or to hear it inwardly without actually saying it. Wherever we are, the sound of Aum is already there. We can very often hear the sound of Aum without chanting it ourselves, but we do not know whether it is coming from our heart or from the atmosphere.

Sometimes during meditation seekers hear the sound of Aum although nobody is chanting it aloud. This means that inwardly somebody has chanted or is chanting Aum and the meditation room has preserved the sound. If we are conscious during sleep, we will hear the sound of Aum. It is not the heartbeat we will hear, but the soundless sound. We will hear it and feel it most convincingly.

If you want to meditate while you are in some public place where there are all kinds of noise, try to enter into your own inner sound itself. To your surprise, you will see that the sounds which disturbed you one minute ago do not bother you now. On the contrary, you will get a sense of achievement because instead of hearing noise, you will hear divine music, and that divine music is produced within you.