42 - Exposition of the word “Om” with regard to the Law of Religious Devotion  

Dattatreya expounds the composition, meaning and efficacy of the sacred word “Om”- It designates the Supreme Soul Brahma; and thorough comprehension of it and meditation on it bring final absorption into Brahma. 

Dattatreya spoke.

1. The yogi who lives thus, rightly busied in religious devotion, cannot be turned away even by hundreds of other lives.

2. And when he has beheld the Supreme Soul, visible, existing in all forms, whose feet and head and neck the universe

3. composes, the lord and creator of the universe, let him in order to attain thereto utter the one mighty and holy syllable Om! Let it be his study as he listens to its true form. 

4. A and U aud M are its three letters; these are its three instants; they are characterized by goodness, passion and

5. ignorance. And another, a half instant, * which has its seat on the top of the syllable, is without quality and can be understood by yogis only. It is called gándhárí,?? as it is to

                  * Anusvára, into which the M may be converted?

† A meaning not in the dictionary.

6. be uttered in the gándhára note. ¶ Being pronounced it reaches the head, and it conveys the feeling of ants moving over the body. 

¶ See note * page 130. 

7. As the syllable Om being pronounced reaches the head, the yogi who is lost in meditation of Om should become united with Brahma, the Supreme Soul. Life is his bow, tho soul is

8. his arrow, Brahma is the target sublime. It is to be pierced by the heedful man; he should be united with Brahma, as the arrow becomes embedded in the target. 

The syllable Om, consisting of three and a half instants,

9. should be known in its true sense as the three Vedas--the 

Rich', Sáma and Yajus--the three worlds, the three fires, and

 10 the three deities Vishnu, Brahmá and Shiva. And the yogi, who is absorbed in religious meditation thereon, may obtain extinction therein. 

Moreover, the letter A is designated the bhúr-loka, or terres. 

trial world, and the letter U the bhuvar-loka, or atmospheric

11. worlds; and the letter M with its nasal mark is decided to be the svar-loka, or celestial world. Now the first instant is called the discrete, * and the second the indiscrete, and the

* Vyaktá.

12. third instant is the intellectual faculty; † the half instant is the highest abode. ¶? In this very order must these stages of

                  † C'hic'h-c'hakti.

                  †† Final omancipation from existence.

13. religious meditation be known. By uttering the word Om, everything both existent and non-existent may be grasped. Now tho first instant is short, the second is long, and the

14. third is prolated, and the half instant is not cognisant to speech Such is this word. Brahma is designated the Supreme

15. “Om.” The man who truly understands it and further meditates on it, escaping the circle of mundane existence

16. casts off the three-fold bonds, and gains sublime extinction in Brahma, the Supreme Soul. And he who is bound with the unconsumed results of his actions, after experiencing death

17. through ill omens, § and recollecting it at the time of his departure, attains to a yogi's condition again. Hence by means of imperfect religious devotion, or again by perfected religious devotion, are always to be known the ill omens, so that he does not sink into despondency at the time of his departure.

                  § Arishtatas.