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Main Index
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key? Even if you understand all the implications, all the philosophical implications, it is meaningless. So AUM is always put in the beginning, and it is always put in the end. The Upanishads always begin with AUM, they always end with AUM. This is the key!
If you enter the house, the first thing to be used is the key; and again, when you come out, the last thing to be used is the key. So enter! Use the key! But if you begin to contemplate on the key and continue sitting at the door, then the key is not a key for you but a barrier. Throw it! -- because it is not opening anything. Rather, it is closing. And you are constantly thinking about the key.
One can go on thinking about the key without using it. There are many who have pondered, thought and contemplated about what AUM means. They have created structures, big structures on it, but they have never used the key. They have never entered the palace. It is a symbol, it is a sign, BUT basically it is a secret key. It can be used as a method to enter into the Cosmic, as a method to drop into the oceanic. The subtler it becomes, the deeper, the nearer it goes to the real; the grosser, the less.
"Meditation is the constant contemplation of That": this is the first sutra.
We live in a world of three dimensions. One dimension is "I-it" -- the world of things. I and my house, I and my furniture, I and my wealth: this is the realm of I-it. A world of it surrounds me.
Then there is another dimension, I-thou: I and my beloved, I and my friend, I and my family -- a world of persons. This is the second realm.
Then there is a third realm, I-That: I and the universe. The Upanishad says, "Meditation is the constant contemplation of THAT" -- neither of it, nor of thou, but of That. That means the Whole. It is not a thing, not a person: it is a That But why use That? Whenever we say "That", it means something that transcends, something that is beyond, something that is not where we are -- neither in our relationships with things nor in our relationships with persons.... That -- without any name, because if you give it a name -- for example, if you call it "God" -- it becomes an I-thou relationship.
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