My question is regarding AUM. Master says, "The purpose of meditation is to receive AUM vibration. No one, if he doesn’t know the Aum vibration, can get there. That is all there is to it!”... We practice the Aum-Technique during Meditation. Once we are out of meditation, how to practice to listen to the AUM throughout the day, during our activities?
—PremKumar S, India
Dear Prem,
Jai Guru!
There are devotees who in fact hear the AUM all the time, also during outer activity. Swami Kriyananda tells the story of a very special devotee who had been an alcoholic but had a deep desire to find God. He took Kriya Yoga initiation from Yogananda and thereafter practiced the technique—quite literally!—with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and his prayer beads in the other. In time he found so much enjoyment in Kriya Yoga practice that one day, halfway through his meditation, he disdainfully set the bottle aside, and never touched it again. Swami Kriyananda met that man, who worked in a factory. He told him: “I hear AUM so loudly, it drowns out the noise of the machinery!”
Amazing!
But if we do not hear the AUM during the day, we may apply this strategy: imagine that all sounds around you are manifestations of AUM. You may pray with Swami Kriyananda: “Divine Mother, let me hear Thy melodies everywhere: in the laughing brooks, in the songs of nightingales-yes, even in the roar of city traffic! Behind all earthly sounds, let me listen for Thy voice alone.”
Otherwise you may also apply another strategy: during activity Yogananda suggested to keep the eyes uplifted to the spiritual eye, as often as we remember. That, after Kriya, is the second most powerful practice to reach Self-Realization. This is an indirect way to listen to AUM: we hear AUM because energy is rising in the spine. If you look at the point between the eyebrows you create a magnet there, which makes your inner energy rise upward.
A third important practice during your daily activity is to remove yourself mentally from Nature’s oppositional states: be very centered and calm, remaining inward, detached from the outer ups and downs. That too brings you closer to AUM as you move though your day.
Guru’s blessing to you,
Jayadev
