In Post 21, I showed how dream, mythic images, and the unconscious are related and can all be activated by viewing a movie in a large dark theater. Now I will discuss some other fascinating ideas about dreams and the unconscious as they come from East India and the syllable Om, more correctly transliterated as Aum. Perhaps you’ve chanted Aum in meditation or heard it chanted on a CD. As we Westerners continue to assimilate more of the Eastern symbols and techniques, we should gain a deeper understanding of what they mean. Following is my explanation of the Aum syllable as given in the Mandukya Upanishad, an East Indian sacred text. This post is also influenced by my study of 20th century mythologist Joseph Campbell. The Upanishads date from about the 7th Century BCE and are the distilled essence of Hindu philosophy. Upanishad roughly translates from Sanskrit as, "sitting at the foot of a master."
To lay a base, keep in mind that Hinduism is more than a religion. It is an entire approach to living that in more traditional times entered into the whole of East Indian society and culture, offering advice and instruction on such varied topics as cooking, education, and lovemaking, to philosophy, humor, politics, and God. Also remember that India likes its exploration of philosophy and religion to be primarily psychological in nature and practical in application. That is to say, the big topics need to relate usefully to the individual mind and heart.
That said, we can now to move to an explanation of the syllable Aum. Generally, the purpose of chanting Aum is to shift one’s consciousness away from ordinary concerns—surviving, procreating, and possessing, to instead focus on ever-expanding or deeper ways of seeing and being in the world. Aum can be broken down into three sounds, individually pronounced ah, ooo, and mmm. Each of these sounds is a metaphor for a specific level of consciousness.
When you chant “ah” with your mouth wide open, only the back of your throat vibrates. You don’t really feel any major vibration throughout your head. Try it now to see for yourself. In Aum meditation training, you are asked to notice this limited vibration and taught that it is a symbol for waking consciousness, that is, the normal awake state of everyday life.
This level of consciousness, the most prevalent in our lives, is for the Hindus only the tip of the entire iceberg of consciousness. In this state of awareness, subject and object are different. I see you, you see me, and we are not the same. We are separate and interact by relationship. At this level, rational logic and emotional intelligence prevail, as they should. Furthermore, in the realm of everyday waking consciousness, objects and concepts do not shine of themselves. They can only be illuminated from without, that is, some other source of light has to shine on an object in order for it to be seen.
Now, there is also an accompanying religious or spiritual parallel. While we are in waking consciousness, we see God as something different and separate from ourselves (subject and object). At this level of awareness, whether on earth or in heaven, we are only relating to God. This is the normal view of the conventional religious practitioner, regardless of the religion.
Now the chant moves from “ah” to “ooo”. When you chant the “ooo” syllable, you notice that the vibration moves forward from the back of the throat, filling more of the mouth cavity with sound and vibration. Try it now…chant “ah” and let it gently slide into ooo: aahhhoooooo. You should feel more of your mouth cavity start to vibrate.
The “ooo” syllable is a symbol for dream consciousness. Because more of the mouth cavity vibrates, we are now dealing with a deeper realm of consciousness, more expansive than waking consciousness. The dream world is one of seemingly infinite possibilities. Many amazing things that would be impossible in waking life happen effortlessly in your dream life. You can fly, travel through time, walk nude in public without embarrassment, on and on.
On more than one occasion, I have had dreams where I am working through incredibly complex mathematical and scientific formulae. In these dreams I am amazed at my knowledge, of which I have no grasp when I am awake. I lucidly recognize this in the midst of the dream. When I return to my normal waking state in the morning, I still have a distinct memory of what happened in the dream, but when I try to recall the intricacies of my mathematical genius, there is nothing available. While this could mean many things, the point for purposes of this discussion is, the dream world is more pliable more dynamic, and more magical than mere waking life.
Unlike the state of waking consciousness in which physical objects must be illuminated from without, dream images shine of themselves—they are self-luminous. You see trees and buildings and people in your dreams without the advantage of light. They shine with the light of your mind, right there in the utter darkness of your dream.
Perhaps even more interesting, in dream consciousness subject and object which appear different on one level are the same on another level. That is, when you dream you are viewing the dream, just as you watch a movie in a dark theater. You see objects and people in your dream that seem like they are other than you. And yet the dream is actually your mind in a process of self-expression. So in a very real sense you are the dream and all its contents. They are not separate from something else called "you". In dream consciousness you are two things at once. You are simultaneously the dream and the dreamer.
This is not some lofty notion--it is literally what happens each night when you dream. Therefore, those skeptical of the concept of “oneness” who do not believe that subject and object can be two aspects of one thing, are disproved by what actually happens in their own dreams. Because of this reality of dream and dreamer being one and the same, your dream life is somehow more intimate than what happens in your waking life.
Now, shifting this idea to the religious parallel, though you and whatever god you worship appear separate on the waking consciousness level, on the level of dream consciousness, you began to realize that you and your god are two aspects of the same thing. As the Hindus tell us, all the gods, all the devils, all the heavens, all the hells, are within us. They are not something “out there” that happened along time ago or which will happen in the future after you die. They are manifestations of the enormous depths of consciousness, amazing projections from the ground of being, present right here and now, making up the construct of your life.
The third syllable in Aum is “mmm”. When your chant moves from “ooo” to “mmm”, you bring the closing of the lips, creating a fuller vibration of the whole mouth, face, and head. Try it now, sliding from ooo to mmm: ...ooommm...This syllable is a symbol for deep, dreamless sleep consciousness, a realm even stranger than dream consciousness. In this state, consciousness is still present but it is embedded in complete darkness.
Dreamless sleep is completely indiscriminate, that is, a consciousness of no specific thing. There is no active imagination or discernment going on. There is no hate, no love, no pain, no addiction, no ecstasy—everything disappears—and yet there you are, physically, fully alive just as if you were awake, with all your body processes still working themselves--breathing, digestion, etc. The only difference is that you are absolutely at peace, the kind of peace that religious supplicants strive and pray for their whole lives but never seem to get.
Life is completely free and empty in deep dreamless sleep. Wow! Again, this is not an abstract theory but rather something that literally happens whenever you are having some solid sack time. Are you beginning to realize that whatever god you implore to meet your demands of peace and tranquility has been answering you every night you sleep tight?
Deep dreamless sleep is not a reprieve or an escape. It is simply a version of the enlightened state right here in the middle of chaos. Now, suppose you could go into the dreamless sleep state while awake. This is the ultimate purpose of all yoga and meditation training, to be awake in the realm of pure unfiltered consciousness with no predilections. But the goal is not to stay there. It is to experientially confirm that this aspect of consciousness-- unified stillness -- is part of the human experience in a body, and to get us to recognize its power. It's what mystics all over the world have been trying to get us to see for at least 2500 years, though few of us listen.
The notion of unified stillness shows up in the esoteric interpretation of Western religions: Gnosticism, Kabbalah, and Sufism...and of course has been known in the Eastern traditions (Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism) for a much longer time.
Ok, now the religious parallel of "mmmm" and deep dreamless sleep. We learned earlier that in dream consciousness, you realize the possibility that you and God, who sometimes appear separate, might actually be one and the same. Through deep dreamless sleep, the reality that you and God finally are the same is demonstrated. Dreamless sleep is a real state of being where all definitions and distinctions actually disappear. It is a valid non-dual condition of mind. It is unborn, unfiltered, unadorned, unbiased, and without any opposite or reciprocal. In the deep dreamless state your incessant need to relate to God or the fear of being separated from God are both dissolved. True oneness becomes a stark reality.
As if that weren’t enough, there is a fourth aspect of Aum, the silence surrounding it, symbolized by the break in sound as you pause to take a breath after chanting Aum. The symbolism of silence is: while all language has the task of describing and objectifying things, and relationships between things, and even the “oneness” of different things, the Ultimate Mystery is not within any class or concept, not even "One". Rather, it is the mysterious void from which all things and all levels of consciousness arise, and back into which they disappear. This conflicts with our traditional Western worldview which states: ex nihilo nihil fit..."out of nothing comes nothing". The Westerner insists that things cannot come from nothing, but rather, there must be some first cause or prime mover that is “something”.
But simply pondering this idea for a moment, your common sense soon tells you how unfounded it is. You realize that the prime condition for anything to exist must be a surrounding empty space in which it can sit...and thus exist. Something needs nothing in order to be something. Real "nothing" or absolute void is beyond what you might imagine as an empty room. Void is a non-dimension beyond something and nothing, in which even an empty room can exist.
This is a strange idea indeed, yet cannot be denied. And in the Mandukya Upanishad we have been discussing, this strange non-being is symbolized by the silence surrounding Aum as you pause to breathe. Thus Aum is said to be a four-syllable word: ah, ooo, mmm, and silence.
I find Hindu philosophy of this period (called the Axial Age) fascinating, because it teaches profound self-knowledge ideas through simple metaphor and images that can be easily seen and grasped. The other great thing is that Hindu thought is never laid down as hard fact or moral doctrine, but as the beginning of an educational dialogue. For me the Upanishads have been continually useful in building a more enriched life that allows me to embrace the world as it is.
To lay a base, keep in mind that Hinduism is more than a religion. It is an entire approach to living that in more traditional times entered into the whole of East Indian society and culture, offering advice and instruction on such varied topics as cooking, education, and lovemaking, to philosophy, humor, politics, and God. Also remember that India likes its exploration of philosophy and religion to be primarily psychological in nature and practical in application. That is to say, the big topics need to relate usefully to the individual mind and heart.
That said, we can now to move to an explanation of the syllable Aum. Generally, the purpose of chanting Aum is to shift one’s consciousness away from ordinary concerns—surviving, procreating, and possessing, to instead focus on ever-expanding or deeper ways of seeing and being in the world. Aum can be broken down into three sounds, individually pronounced ah, ooo, and mmm. Each of these sounds is a metaphor for a specific level of consciousness.
When you chant “ah” with your mouth wide open, only the back of your throat vibrates. You don’t really feel any major vibration throughout your head. Try it now to see for yourself. In Aum meditation training, you are asked to notice this limited vibration and taught that it is a symbol for waking consciousness, that is, the normal awake state of everyday life.
This level of consciousness, the most prevalent in our lives, is for the Hindus only the tip of the entire iceberg of consciousness. In this state of awareness, subject and object are different. I see you, you see me, and we are not the same. We are separate and interact by relationship. At this level, rational logic and emotional intelligence prevail, as they should. Furthermore, in the realm of everyday waking consciousness, objects and concepts do not shine of themselves. They can only be illuminated from without, that is, some other source of light has to shine on an object in order for it to be seen.
Now, there is also an accompanying religious or spiritual parallel. While we are in waking consciousness, we see God as something different and separate from ourselves (subject and object). At this level of awareness, whether on earth or in heaven, we are only relating to God. This is the normal view of the conventional religious practitioner, regardless of the religion.
Now the chant moves from “ah” to “ooo”. When you chant the “ooo” syllable, you notice that the vibration moves forward from the back of the throat, filling more of the mouth cavity with sound and vibration. Try it now…chant “ah” and let it gently slide into ooo: aahhhoooooo. You should feel more of your mouth cavity start to vibrate.
The “ooo” syllable is a symbol for dream consciousness. Because more of the mouth cavity vibrates, we are now dealing with a deeper realm of consciousness, more expansive than waking consciousness. The dream world is one of seemingly infinite possibilities. Many amazing things that would be impossible in waking life happen effortlessly in your dream life. You can fly, travel through time, walk nude in public without embarrassment, on and on.
On more than one occasion, I have had dreams where I am working through incredibly complex mathematical and scientific formulae. In these dreams I am amazed at my knowledge, of which I have no grasp when I am awake. I lucidly recognize this in the midst of the dream. When I return to my normal waking state in the morning, I still have a distinct memory of what happened in the dream, but when I try to recall the intricacies of my mathematical genius, there is nothing available. While this could mean many things, the point for purposes of this discussion is, the dream world is more pliable more dynamic, and more magical than mere waking life.
Unlike the state of waking consciousness in which physical objects must be illuminated from without, dream images shine of themselves—they are self-luminous. You see trees and buildings and people in your dreams without the advantage of light. They shine with the light of your mind, right there in the utter darkness of your dream.
Perhaps even more interesting, in dream consciousness subject and object which appear different on one level are the same on another level. That is, when you dream you are viewing the dream, just as you watch a movie in a dark theater. You see objects and people in your dream that seem like they are other than you. And yet the dream is actually your mind in a process of self-expression. So in a very real sense you are the dream and all its contents. They are not separate from something else called "you". In dream consciousness you are two things at once. You are simultaneously the dream and the dreamer.
This is not some lofty notion--it is literally what happens each night when you dream. Therefore, those skeptical of the concept of “oneness” who do not believe that subject and object can be two aspects of one thing, are disproved by what actually happens in their own dreams. Because of this reality of dream and dreamer being one and the same, your dream life is somehow more intimate than what happens in your waking life.
Now, shifting this idea to the religious parallel, though you and whatever god you worship appear separate on the waking consciousness level, on the level of dream consciousness, you began to realize that you and your god are two aspects of the same thing. As the Hindus tell us, all the gods, all the devils, all the heavens, all the hells, are within us. They are not something “out there” that happened along time ago or which will happen in the future after you die. They are manifestations of the enormous depths of consciousness, amazing projections from the ground of being, present right here and now, making up the construct of your life.
The third syllable in Aum is “mmm”. When your chant moves from “ooo” to “mmm”, you bring the closing of the lips, creating a fuller vibration of the whole mouth, face, and head. Try it now, sliding from ooo to mmm: ...ooommm...This syllable is a symbol for deep, dreamless sleep consciousness, a realm even stranger than dream consciousness. In this state, consciousness is still present but it is embedded in complete darkness.
Dreamless sleep is completely indiscriminate, that is, a consciousness of no specific thing. There is no active imagination or discernment going on. There is no hate, no love, no pain, no addiction, no ecstasy—everything disappears—and yet there you are, physically, fully alive just as if you were awake, with all your body processes still working themselves--breathing, digestion, etc. The only difference is that you are absolutely at peace, the kind of peace that religious supplicants strive and pray for their whole lives but never seem to get.
Life is completely free and empty in deep dreamless sleep. Wow! Again, this is not an abstract theory but rather something that literally happens whenever you are having some solid sack time. Are you beginning to realize that whatever god you implore to meet your demands of peace and tranquility has been answering you every night you sleep tight?
Deep dreamless sleep is not a reprieve or an escape. It is simply a version of the enlightened state right here in the middle of chaos. Now, suppose you could go into the dreamless sleep state while awake. This is the ultimate purpose of all yoga and meditation training, to be awake in the realm of pure unfiltered consciousness with no predilections. But the goal is not to stay there. It is to experientially confirm that this aspect of consciousness-- unified stillness -- is part of the human experience in a body, and to get us to recognize its power. It's what mystics all over the world have been trying to get us to see for at least 2500 years, though few of us listen.
The notion of unified stillness shows up in the esoteric interpretation of Western religions: Gnosticism, Kabbalah, and Sufism...and of course has been known in the Eastern traditions (Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism) for a much longer time.
Ok, now the religious parallel of "mmmm" and deep dreamless sleep. We learned earlier that in dream consciousness, you realize the possibility that you and God, who sometimes appear separate, might actually be one and the same. Through deep dreamless sleep, the reality that you and God finally are the same is demonstrated. Dreamless sleep is a real state of being where all definitions and distinctions actually disappear. It is a valid non-dual condition of mind. It is unborn, unfiltered, unadorned, unbiased, and without any opposite or reciprocal. In the deep dreamless state your incessant need to relate to God or the fear of being separated from God are both dissolved. True oneness becomes a stark reality.
As if that weren’t enough, there is a fourth aspect of Aum, the silence surrounding it, symbolized by the break in sound as you pause to take a breath after chanting Aum. The symbolism of silence is: while all language has the task of describing and objectifying things, and relationships between things, and even the “oneness” of different things, the Ultimate Mystery is not within any class or concept, not even "One". Rather, it is the mysterious void from which all things and all levels of consciousness arise, and back into which they disappear. This conflicts with our traditional Western worldview which states: ex nihilo nihil fit..."out of nothing comes nothing". The Westerner insists that things cannot come from nothing, but rather, there must be some first cause or prime mover that is “something”.
But simply pondering this idea for a moment, your common sense soon tells you how unfounded it is. You realize that the prime condition for anything to exist must be a surrounding empty space in which it can sit...and thus exist. Something needs nothing in order to be something. Real "nothing" or absolute void is beyond what you might imagine as an empty room. Void is a non-dimension beyond something and nothing, in which even an empty room can exist.
This is a strange idea indeed, yet cannot be denied. And in the Mandukya Upanishad we have been discussing, this strange non-being is symbolized by the silence surrounding Aum as you pause to breathe. Thus Aum is said to be a four-syllable word: ah, ooo, mmm, and silence.
I find Hindu philosophy of this period (called the Axial Age) fascinating, because it teaches profound self-knowledge ideas through simple metaphor and images that can be easily seen and grasped. The other great thing is that Hindu thought is never laid down as hard fact or moral doctrine, but as the beginning of an educational dialogue. For me the Upanishads have been continually useful in building a more enriched life that allows me to embrace the world as it is.
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