One of my favorite reads is The Examining Room of Dr. Charles He does not post every day but when he does, they are wonderful little insights into life and the Medical Profession. Today's was wonderful:
Aum
"What is that?" I asked the young Indian girl with long black hair.
"This necklace you mean?" she asked as I pulled the stethoscope earpiece out of my right ear so that I could hear her better. "It's a gift from my family in India."
Adorning her neck was a simple chain with a curious pendant attached. I looked closer at the cryptic emblem but could not discern what it meant. "Is that a Hindu symbol?" I pushed further.
"Yes" kind of, she answered with growing unease.
The delicate swirls of the glyph were smoothly drawn as if by a painter's brush, and within the symbol there existed some kind of meaning. "Do you mind if I ask what it stands for?"
The young girl looked down at her sternum while lifting the pendant off her chest. She turned it over once and then explained: "It stand for Aum. It's hard to describe what it means in words, but it's sort of like the birth of the universe."
I complimented her on the jewelry, and the heady sentiment behind it, but then kept on going with my physical examination. High school students can only tolerate revealing a certain quantum of their own extraordinary uniqueness.
Over the next several months I gradually forgot the encounter until one day, while perusing astronomical pictures on the internet, I came across an image of the Lagoon Nebula. In it there were brilliant stars, bright gases as richly colored as human eyes, and shadowy dust filaments leftover from supernovae debris, all of which were swirling in infinity, creating new stars and heavenly matter. I remembered what the young girl had said ― birth of the universe.
My curiosity about the symbol around her neck reawakened. I learned that it was indeed Aum, or Om, a Sanskrit icon tracing back to the world's oldest surviving religion of Hinduism. It represents the incomprehensible absolute, the source of all manifest existence, and the unknowable infinity of space and time.
Dr. Charles then goes into a wonderful examination of this symbol and concludes:
I wonder how I will react the next time I see the young girl in my office, and whether she will be wearing that pendant. While I have only grazed the surface of her religion it has left me with a deeper appreciation for the wisdom, if not proven scientific knowledge, of the ancients.
Despite by newfound respect for Aum, I promise not to begin chanting in the examining room. Or at the very least while anyone still might be around.
He doesn't post every day but it's well worth your time checking in couple times/week. Wonderful writing.
