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BRAHMANISM
formed in its vocal quality, and finally subsides into the silence that follows (and which must be regarded as forming part of its sound in a latent, meaningful state of repose), so likewise the four "statcs," or components, of being. They are transformations of the one existence which, taken together, constitute the totality of its modes, whether regarded from the microcosmic or from the macrocosmic point of view. The A and U are as essential to the sound as M, or as the SILENCE against which the sound appears. Moreover, it would be a mistake to say that A UM did not exist while the SILENCE reigned; for it would be still potential. The actual manifestation of the syllable, on the other hand, is fleeting and evanescent, whereas the SILENCE abides. The SILENCE, indecd, is present elsewhere during a local pronunciation of AUM-that is to say (by analogy), transcendentally during the creation, manifestation, and dissolution of a universe.
Bhagavad Gita
It was in the great paradoxes of the cpoch-making Bhagavad Gitā 54 that the non-Brāhmanical, pre-Aryan thought of aboriginal India became fruitfully combined and harmonized with the Vedic ideas of the Aryan invaders. In the eighteen brief chapters was displayed a kaleidoscopic interworking of the two traditions that for some ten centuries had been contending for the control and mastery of the Indian mind.
66 The full title is Srimad-bhagavad-gita-upanisadas, “I he tcachings given in the song of the Sublime Exalted One."
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