The ultimate word in reality is any word. For all words arise from this same Isness, and at the end of the sound, sabda, goes back to It. Hence this It is also called Sabdabrahman, the Brahman, the Absolute of the (Sounding) word. For inside of each one of us is the anahata, the unstruck sound, the active silence from which all sounds arise, as music or as word, the note of Valéry. In a penetrating essay, published by Christopher Middleton, Rilke’s Birth of Venus, he uncovers the sound structure of this pure poem. And he comes to the conclusion that Rilke used AUM as the ‘nuclear sound pattern in the whole poem. One could extend this sound,’ continues Middleton, ‘to include the role of ɑ as alpha and µ as omega in the pith series of German vowels: the first and last things in the universe. With M as its axis, the poem would then voice the equilibrium attained by the magical universe of the alphabet at the moment of Aphrodite’s birth.’

Aumkara atmaiva, samvisati

So concludes the Mandukyopanishad, belonging to the Atharva Veda—

atmanatmanam ya evam veda

Aum indeed the ‘I’. He who knows this, enters the ‘I’ with his I.

Thus I go to where the ‘I’ is.

References

1. The Principal Upanishads by S. Radhakrishnan, Allen and Unwin, London.
2. Ètudes Vèdiques et Panin-Éennes, Tome I, by Louis Renou.
3. Vakyapadiya (I) translated by K.A. Subramania Iyer, Deccan College, Poona.
4. Entre Moi et Moi by George Poulet, Jose Corti, Paris. From whom I have taken many of these quotations of Valéry.
5. Selected Writings of Paul Valéry. New Directions, New York.

17

Look, the Universe Is Burning!