What if the "Word of God"
was really a word and not a book?

Ever since I was old enough to see over the pew, I remember questioning when the priest at church would hold up the Bible and proclaim it to be "the Word of God."

Call me simple, but the Bible contains 783,137 words (plural!)— how can so many words be the one true "Word of God."

It wasn't until I turned sixteen and started studying the far more ancient and less ambiguous texts of India that I found an alternative explanation for "the Word of God" that made far more sense to me.

The Vedas (c. 1500 BCE) do not talk about the Word of God, but rather the Sound of God. A word is a sound — so close enough. They taught that the universe consists of vibrating atoms (called anus in Sanskrit, literally "no-split"). Behind all those vibrating atoms they believed there exists a unifying vibration that holds everything together and gives order to the universe.

In his book, The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You, Paramahansa Yogananda interpreted the famous "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" verse from the Book of John as such:

"The Word, the creative energy and sound of Cosmic Vibration, like the sound waves of an unimaginably powerful earthquake, went out of the Creator to manifest the universe. That Cosmic Vibration, permeated with Cosmic Intelligence, was condensed into subtle elements — thermal, electric, magnetic, and all manner of rays; thence into atoms of vapor (gases), liquids, and solids. The 'Word was made flesh' means the vibratory energy producing that cosmic sound was condensed into matter."

This vibration of God, according to the ancient Hindus, sounds like the word "om."

In Mind Over Matter: Conversations with the Cosmos, K.C. Cole tells how the California Institute of Technology agreed with the ancient Vedas when they "published the most detailed analysis of the cosmos' primordial song: a low hum, deep in its throat, that preceded both atoms and stars. It is a simple sound, like the mantra 'Om.' But hidden within its harmonics are details of the universe's shape, composition and birth."

"Om" is often translated from the Sanskrit as "aum" which is rather close in spelling and pronunciation to the Hebrew "amen." Indeed, even the Bible suggests that "amen" is the Word of God:

"These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God..." (Revelations 3:14)

The yogis of ancient India taught that if you learned to quiet your mind you could hear the aum (or the amen) within you. They sometimes described it as the sound of rushing waters — just as the Bible refers to God's voice as being "like the sound of many waters" (Ezekiel 43:2).

This vibration of God can also be felt, rather than heard, as love, peace and wisdom — much akin to the descriptions of the Holy Ghost in the Bible.

Jesus said the Kingdom of God is within us. Well, then, maybe so is His Word. In that case, instead of reading words on a page in order to "listen to God's Word" we should be closing our eyes and listening to the hum of the universe inside our own souls.

For more on this subject, I highly recommend Paramahansa Yogananda's Vedic interpretation of the four Gospels available at: https://blazingpinecone.com/shop/the-second-coming-of-christ/ 

—John C.A. Manley

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story, the forthcoming All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of speculative fiction. Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber at: https://blazingpinecone.com/subscribe/