an abbreviation of miti (destruction), Vaiswanara and Taijasa, at the destruction and regeneration of the world, being, as it were, absorbed into Prajna—­the Puranas make of a, a name of Vishnu; of u, a name of his consort “Sri;” and of m, a designation of their joint worshipper; or they see in a, u, m, the Triad—­Brahm, Vishnu, and Siva; the first being represented by a, the second by u, and the third by m—­each sect, of course, identifying the combination of these letters, or Om with their supreme deity.  Thus, also, in the Bhagavadgita, which is devoted to the worship of Vishnu in his incarnation as Krishna, though it is essentially a poem of philosophical tendencies based on the doctrine of the Yoga, Krishna in one passage says of himself that he is Om; while in another passage he qualifies the latter as the supreme spirit.  A common designation of the word Om—­for instance, in the last-named passages of the Bhagavadgita is the word Pranava, which comes from a so-called radical nu, “praise,” with the prefix pra amongst other meanings implying emphasis, and, therefore, literally means “eulogium, emphatic praise.”  Although Om, in its original sense as a word of solemn or emphatic assent, is, properly speaking, restricted to the Vedic literature, it deserves notice that it is now-a-days often used by the natives of India in the sense of “yes,” without, of course, any allusion to the mystic properties which are ascribed to it in the religious works.  Monier Williams gives the following account of the mystic syllable Om:  “When by means of repeating the syllable Om, which originally seems to have meant ‘that’ or ‘yes,’ they had arrived at a certain degree of mental tranquillity, the question arose what was meant by this Om, and to this various answers were given according as the mind was to be led up to higher and higher objects.  Thus, in one passage, we are told at first that Om is the beginning of the Veda, or as we have to deal with an Upanishad of the Shama Veda, the beginning of the Shama Veda; so that he who meditates on Om may be supposed to be meditating on the whole of the Shama Veda.

“Om is the essence of the Shama Veda which, being almost entirely taken from the Rig Veda, may itself be called the essence of the Rig Veda.  The Rig Veda stands for all speech, the Shama Veda for all breath or life; so that Om may be conceived again as the symbol of all speech and all life.  Om thus becomes the name not only of all our mental and physical powers, but is especially that of the living principle of the pran or spirit.  This is explained by the parable in the second chapter, while in the third chapter that spirit within us is identified with the spirit in the sun.

“He, therefore, who meditates on Om, meditates on the spirit in man as identical with the spirit in Nature or in the sun, and thus the lesson that is meant to be taught in the beginning of the Khandogya Upanishad is really this that none of the Vedas, with their sacrifices and ceremonies, could ever secure the salvation of the worshipers.  That is, the sacred works performed, according to the rules of the Vedas, are of no avail in the end, but meditation on Om, or that knowledge of what is meant by Om, alone can procure true salvation or true immortality.