In plain words
‘Oṃ’ is the first of all the letters!
In olden days the great ṛṣis performed tapas of many kinds, carried out enquiry, recognised everything through their own divinity, and kept teaching the world that humanness is most rare. ‘I know this great Puruṣa, radiant as the sun, beyond darkness,’ they said. That is, they likened the special worth of humanness to divinity, held it to be radiant, serene, and a barrier to Ajñāna, and went on proclaiming it. Through the workings of the mind, through dhyāna and through tapas, they recognised two things. The first, the letter. The second, the number. Among these letters, the very first is ‘Oṃ’. All the letters have come forth from the Praṇava itself, the first letter of all. The first letter of all letters is the Praṇava. Without the letter ‘Oṃ’ no letter at all can be uttered. Our boys play the harmonium in the bhajans. Inside this harmonium, on one side, they keep filling in air. On the other side they keep pressing all the reeds. When these reeds are pressed, it sounds ‘sa ri ga ma pa da ni sa’. What is the basis of these seven letters ‘sa ri ga ma pa da ni sa’? The air that was filled in. That is the ‘Oṃkāra’. From the air called Oṃkāra came these seven notes, ‘sa ri ga ma pa da ni sa’. In the same way, among the numbers too, we say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Among all of them, 1 alone is the chief. All the rest are changed forms of this 1. Take 1 from 9 and it becomes 8. Add 1 to 8 and it becomes 9. Coming and going are one! Being is one! That One they declared to be the beginning, the end and the affirmation ‘It is’. They kept showing that this One alone is divinity. That alone, they said, is the seed of this world. There is no seed without its husk.