The whole of creation unfolds from a single primordial sound, and that sound is Oṃ.
Nāda Brahman: ultimate reality experienced as sound/vibration; the Praṇava (Oṃ) is the primal sound from which the manifest world unfolds.
— Nāda-bindu Upaniṣad; Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad 1 (Auṁ)
Chant Oṃ slowly and follow its three sounds — A, U, M — as they fade into the silence that follows. That silence is not empty; it is the source the sound came from and returns to. To listen inward for it is to trace creation back to its origin.
A poetic teaching to sit with and contemplate.
Several streams of the tradition hold that at the root of things is not solid substance but sacred sound. The Praṇava, Oṃ, is called the seed-syllable of creation — the primordial vibration from which the manifest world unfolds and into which it resolves. Nāda Brahman names the experience of ultimate Reality itself as living, resonant sound: to hear rightly is to hear the Divine humming beneath all forms.
Oṃ is a whole contemplation in a single syllable. Its three sounds — A, U, M — are said to hold waking, dream and deep sleep, the beginning, middle and end of all things; and beyond them lies the silence into which the sound dissolves, turīya, the soundless ground. This is why Oṃ opens prayer and meditation across the tradition: to intone it slowly and then attend to the stillness that follows is to ride the sound back to its source. Sound becomes a ladder — from the audible, to the subtle, to the silence that was speaking all along.