We appeal, therefore, to all who wish to raise themselves and their fellow creatures—man and beast—out of the thoughtless jog trot of selfish every-day life. It is not thought that Utopia can be established in a day; but through the spreading of the idea of Universal Brotherhood, the truth in all things may be discovered. Certainly, if we all say that it is useless, that such highly strung, sentimental notions cannot obtain currency, nothing will ever be done. A beginning must be made, and has been by the Theosophical Society. Although philanthropic institutions and schemes are constantly being brought forward by good and noble men and women, vice, selfishness, brutality and the resulting misery, seem to grow no less. Riches are accumulating in the hands of the few, while the poor are ground harder every day as they increase in number. Prisons, asylums for the outcast and the magdalen, can be filled much faster than it is possible to erect them. All this points unerringly to the existence of a vital error somewhere. It shows that merely healing the outside by hanging a murderer or providing asylums and prisons, will never reduce the number of criminals nor the hordes of children born and growing up in hot-beds of vice. What is wanted is true knowledge of the spiritual condition of man, his aim and destiny. This is offered to a reasonable certainty in the Aryan literature, and those who must begin the reform, are those who are so fortunate as to be placed in the world where they can see and think out the problems all are endeavoring to solve, even if they know that the great day may not come until after their death. Such a study leads us to accept the utterance of Prajapati to his sons: “Be restrained, be liberal, be merciful;” it is the death of selfishness.
AUM!
The most sacred mystic syllable of the Vedas, is Aum. It is the first letter of the Sanscrit alphabet, and by some it is thought to be the sound made by a new born child when the breath is first drawn into the lungs. The daily prayers of the Hindu Brahmin are begun and ended with it, and the ancient sacred books say that with that syllable the gods themselves address the most Holy One.
In the Chandogya Upanishad its praises are sung in these words:[1]
Let a man meditate on the syllable OM called the udgitha,[2] * * it is the best of all essences, the highest, deserving the highest place, the eighth.
It is then commanded to meditate on this syllable as the breath, of two kinds, in the body—the vital breath and the mere breath in the mouth or lungs, for by this meditation come knowledge and proper performance of sacrifice. In verse 10 is found: “Now, therefore, it would seem to follow that both he who knows the true meaning of OM, and he who does not, perform the same sacrifice. But this is not so, for knowledge and ignorance are different. The sacrifice which a man performs with knowledge, faith and the Upanishad is more powerful.”
Outwardly the same sacrifice is performed by both, but that performed by him who has knowledge, and has meditated on the secret meaning of OM partakes of the qualities inhering in OM, which need just that knowledge and faith as the medium through which they may become visible and active. If a jeweler and a mere ploughman sell a precious stone, the knowledge of the former bears better fruit than the ignorance of the latter.
Shankaracharya in his Sharir Bhashya, dwells largely on OM, and in the Vayu Purana, a whole chapter is devoted to it. Now as Vayu is air, we can see in what direction the minds of those who were concerned with that purana were tending. They were analyzing sound, which will lead to discoveries of interest regarding the human spiritual and physical constitution. In sound is tone, and tone is one of the most important and deep reaching of all natural things. By tone, the natural man, and the child, express the feelings, just as animals in their tones make known their nature. The tone of the voice of the tiger is quite different from that of the dove, as different as their natures are from each other, and if the sights, sounds and objects in the natural world mean anything, or point the way to any laws underlying these differences, then there is nothing puerile in considering the meaning of tone.
The Padma Purana says that: “The syllable OM is the leader of all prayers; let it therefore be employed in the beginning of all prayers,” and Manu, in his laws, ordains: “A Brahmin, at the beginning and end of a lesson on the Vedas, must always pronounce the syllable OM, for unless OM precede, his learning will slip away from him, and unless it follows, nothing will be long retained.”