But Sat-Chit-Anand has a significance which goes far higher than meaning. It is just a fragrance which has left the flower. The flower is visible – part of this world, part of matter – but the fragrance, you cannot catch hold of it. You can feel it, it can touch you deeply. It can reach to your innermost core, but still you cannot figure out the meaning of it. You cannot figure it out, what it is in reality.
The meaning is irrelevant here; significance becomes the relevance. Not that it has no meaning, but basically it has only significance. And the significance is that the very sound, Sat-Chit-Anand penetrates into the heart, breaking all the barriers and all the bars and all the defense measures. It resounds within your being, creating a subtle harmony, a deep peace, a strange feeling of fulfillment, of being at ease with the world, with the universe, with existence itself – at ease not only with existence, but with yourself too.
It is a pure silence, as if water can be condensed into ice, and the ice can be again melted into water. That is the reality of such beautiful sounds. They can be condensed into meaning, but their basic reality is to melt within you and to reach to each fiber of your being, to each cell, to give it a dance.
These are the mystic sounds. They are very few. I have talked to you about Satyam-Shivam-Sundaram, Sat-Chit-Anand, Hari Om Tat Sat, Om Mani Padme Hum, Om-Shantih-Shantih-Shantih. These five I have chosen as the most significant, as the most deep-going. I will try to give you the meaning also, because that meaning will help the significance to become deeper. That meaning will not only touch your heart, it will also touch your intelligence. And you have to be touched in your totality to be transformed.
I will begin with the last one. That is the sound every Eastern scripture ends with…Om-Shantih-Shantih-Shantih. It means “The soundless sound, or the sound of silence: peace…peace…peace…” Just giving you the sense of the whole scripture in these few telegraphic words. Every scripture in the East ends with the same. It may be Hindu, it may be Buddhist, it may be Jaina – it doesn’t matter.
They are all different in their philosophies. They are all different in their theologies. They are different religions continuously in controversy for at least ten thousand years. But strangely, they all end their scriptures with the sound of silence: peace…peace…peace…It seems they are all different roots of this experience.
They may differ about their roots, about the description of their roots. They may quarrel, they may contradict each other, but as far as the end is concerned, when they reach to the highest peak of consciousness, all that is found is the sound of silence and utter peace, so deep that they have to repeat it three times: peace…peace…peace…