The Supreme Word

The human body is a symbolic representation or projection of the entire creation and carries in its material parts and faculties all cosmic principles and powers; and there is continuity of the involutionary and evolutionary paths. Speech in its fullness is the only faculty which exists in the human but in no other material/life form. In the creative process from ether, vibration is the first step; hence ‘word’ represents Brahman’s creative power towards form. The five elemental states are different, progressive degrees of self-modification of the spaceless, timeless and formless One consciousness, the first of which is the etheric self-awareness of itself as vibration.

Brahman, hidden inside every phenomenon, needs to be extricated through a different perception from the ordinary through suitable upasana or seeking. This applies to human speech, as to everything else. We do not understand or properly utilize the creative power of speech because of our ignorance of its causal roots. Thought forms emanated by us, emotion-laced and powered, reach and affect ourselves others physically and vitally, and vice-versa; this is the core of occultism. Masaru Emoto’s famous experiments on the impact of emotions on the molecular and crystalline structure of water, are a case in point. Cymatics is the study of the impact of acoustic vibrations on material patterns; an example of the influence of sound on forms as studied by modern science. Human speech, similarly, not only represents, but generates. The repetition of the Mantra (as ‘brooding’) not only enables access to greater knowledge, but also newer faculties in the user and also others around; finally changes in the material environment.

 

The causative arrow from the supramental down to the material in the planar hierarchy, combined with the generative power of vibration in the five-elemental sequence, shows us the significance of the Supreme Word or Pranava (Aum’s origin) and its creative logos (holding, ordering, coordinating, governing power). The physical utterance of Aum is a part of the universal material Virat, which is a densification of the universal Hiranyagarbha inhabiting the mental-vital worlds, who is the projection of the cosmic Brahman sourced from the transcendent. Likewise, the occult significance of the Shree Yantra in the other direction. Seed-sounds, their forms and rhythms offer us a philological/etymological insight into the origins and evolving structure of languages; and eventually all of creation. 

 

The correspondence of vibrations across planes helps us understand, and potentially actuate causation at psychological if not material levels. The higher the plane, the greater the depth and span of meaning, significance, versatility and degrees of freedom; physical form is the most particulate/particular. A seed-sound (bija-mantra) holds the potential of a whole range of meaning and creative formation, much like the seed holds for a tree; the acoustic example being the feedback echo when the source meets the result (serpent eating its tail - the ouroboros of occult mythology). The Sanskrit vowels and consonants are mapped in sequence to the petals of the chakras from the top-down.

 

Brahman is not expressible by the word in the mental consciousness, but only its truths, forms and phenomena. All evolution is an attempt to find and represent truthfully the spiritual body of the Eternal, Brahmano Rupam. Human speech is Brahman himself providing the impetus for articulation of a truth-experience, whose representative fidelity, depictive resplendence and creative vitality is commensurate with the consciousness-quality of the exponent channel.

 

~ Inspired by the commentary on the Kena Upanishad, Chapter 5

Neelesh Marik, India

Keywords: Sound, Word, Speech, Vibration, Creative Power, Mantra, Brahman