OM, when used as a sound symbol indicates auspiciousness, and is chanted at the beginning of all prayers and religious studies.

OM is derived from the Sanskrit verbal root ‘av’ which means ‘to protect’. So when one chants OM understanding it to be the name of the Lord, it actually becomes a prayer for one’s protection.

Since the Vedas were an oral tradition, the phonetic parts of OM are split into three, each with its own special significance.
The three letters that go to make up OM are ‘a’, ‘u’ and ‘m’.
‘a’ symbolises the physical world of experience, which is made up of the experiencer, the experienced and the experience... that which is known and unknown.
‘u’ symbolises the thought world - the world of dreams and imagination.
‘m’ symbolises the experience of deep sleep... the unmanifest condition. That which existed before creation and will be there after dissolution.

The waker and the waking experience, the dreamer and the dream experience, and the sleeper and the sleep experience - all are represented in OM.

When OM is chanted, the silence between the chants, or the amatra, stands for the consciousness and awareness which is the basis for all three worlds, the order that lies behind all creation. OM represents all sounds and all words.

In the visual symbol that signifies OM, the top and bottom curves represent ‘a’ and ‘u’ - representing the gross and the subtle planes of existence and experience. The curve that projects from the middle of the symbol, rather like the trunk of an elephant, stands for ‘m’ or the causal plane. Above the curved trunk, one finds the small curve with the tiny dot. This is the ‘candra-bindu’, and it represents a mystical lingering sound, like the sound after a gong has sounded, when OM is pronounced as an audio-symbol. This stands for The Absolute.

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