Om Asato Maa Sad-Gamaya |


In Sanskrit,
 असतो मा सद्गमय 
तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय 
मृत्योर्मा अमृतं गमय 
 शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः 

In English
Om Asato Maa Sad-Gamaya |
Tamaso Maa Jyotir-Gamaya |
Mrtyor-Maa Amrtam Gamaya |
Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||
                                                                                        

                                                                                                        By Veer Anand


Line by line Meaning:

Om Asato Maa Sad-Gamaya |
1: Om, (O Lord) Keep me not in (the Phenomenal World of) Unreality, but make me go towards the Reality (of Eternal Self),

Tamaso Maa Jyotir-Gamaya |
2: Keep me not in (the Ignorant State of) Darkness, but make me go towards the Light (of Spiritual Knowledge),

Mrtyor-Maa Amrtam Gamaya |
3: Keep me not in (the World of) Mortality, but make me go towards the World of Immortality (of Self-Realization),

Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||
4: Om, Peace, Peace, Peace.

SIMPLIFIED MEANING
In this simple yet powerful prayer, the seeker is not longing any worldly things such as food, wealth or even health. Rather, seeker acknowledges his or her limited ability to see the limitless truth. Truth, that has been always been true, not in a particular frame of time.
Through this prayer, the seeker is acknowledging the fact that nothing is permanent in this world. Everything is constantly changing - from planetary movement to seasons of the world, from emotions to intellect - we constantly go back and forth from happiness to sorrow. Hence, seeker prays to the Guru to show the ultimate truth through raised consciousness. Just as the  only remedy for darkness is eternal light, the only remedy for ignorance is true knowledge.
It is also a reminder that seeker was never born, nor can ever die, as seeker is neither the body nor the mind or the intellect, rather seeker is urging Guru to grant the eternal and blissful consciousness.
May peace be with you! 
These chants have very deep philosophical meaning. Do not look at only the literal meaning of the words even though that is also noble enough and can be meaningful at different layers of consciousness.
As per Vedic philosophy the existence which we perceive through 5 senses is very limited and true only for this dimension or realm. So this is ‘Maya’. So the prayer says Take me to the level of consciousness where I see the the “Sat” the satya swaroop of this existence which is omnipotent “Brahma” or energy. So this world is “Asat” false. Hense “Asato ma Sadgamaya”.
Tamasoma jyotirgamaya In the same way tamas= darkness of ignorance. So take me out of this Tamas to the Light of knowledge/experience of consciousness
Mrtyorma amrtam gamaya
Mrutyu means which is destructible. This whole existence has a start and an end. It is finite. So take me to something which never comes to an end or which has no beginning and the end. Means lift my finite consciousness to the level of Infinite consciousness level
So in another words all the three, point to the ultimate goal of MOKSHA, propagated by Vedic Sanatan Dharma.
 “OM” is a highly revered and divine word (Celestial) which has a world full of meaning. It is believed to be the origin of the Universe. When chanted the right way, “Om” resonates in all directions giving absolute positivity enhancing both physical & mental potential of a human. It impacts the mind and body positively, when chanted the right way with a specific inhaling & exhaling technique. It is most crucial and is widely practiced in Yoga & Medication.



Something to read and enjoy if you also like to wonder, ponder and look at the world from different angles, this I found somewhere and was quite an interesting take on the mantra and subject at hand:

 

Asatoma Sadgamaya Meaning in English

Asatoma Sadgamaya translates to, lead me from illusion to reality... and is the first line of a very commonly recited Sanskrit prayer/mantra known from the Upanishads. In the West, it is commonly known from The Matrix Revolutions during the end title sequence. I thought it was clever of them that they chose this mantra because it bears some similarities with The Matrix. Krishna Consciousness is about the self-realization that we are not this material body. That we, and the world we are in, are temporary material illusions, and to free oneself from it, one has to give up all material desires and sense attachments. The Matrix was a system of control to enslave mankind. It was designed to fool the mind into thinking that everything the senses felt was real, when in fact, it was a computer generated construct fed directly into the brain.
The very heart of Krishna consciousness understanding is that your material body is temporary and an illusion (asatya). Since we rely on our material senses too much, then death (the end of the body -- mrityu) too appears real to us. However, your true self is the soul, and that lives forever (amritam). The self realization of this fact is true knowledge (satya), and those who are absent of this knowledge are ignorant. The Bhagavat Gita Chapter 15 mentions the term asvattha to describe the material construct as being temporary, and based on the desires of the souls.

Meaning and Context

Sat or sad from the word satya, meaning truth or reality
Asat or asato from the word asatya, meaning false or illusion
Jyoti or Jyotir approximates to light, or knowledge
Tamaso approximates to darkness to mean absence of knowledge which is ignorance
Mrityu or mrityorma means death, and mrityu-lok is a material world of death where people live in ignorance and then die
Amritam or amar, is without death, lives forever
Shanti, peace
Gamaya, approximates best as, lead me from. Or, guide me from... However since this appears at the end of the line, you can imagine that the Sanskrit sentence is back to front, which is corrected when translating to English.
In almost all civilized cultures, light represents knowledge, whilst absence of light is ignorance. Hence we can cross out light and darkness and replace it with knowledge and ignorance.
OM, Mantras often start with and end in the sacred vibration OM.


English Translation

Om,
God,


Asato maa sad-gamaya,
Lead me from -- illusion to reality,


Tamaso maa jyotir-gamaya,
Lead me from -- ignorance to knowledge


mrityorma amritam-gamaya,
Lead me from -- death to immortality,


Om shanti, shanti, shanti
God, peace...


The Secret...

The bit that will really blow your socks off, and this will interest all the Hare Krishna followers at ISKON as well, is that in the Marix film there is this test part where Neo has to jump between two buildings. He falls, and the connection breaks, and he wakes up in his real body outside the matrix. The first thing he notices was blood pouring from his nose, and he asks Morpheus why that was so since the matrix was supposed to be an illusion. His answer was that the mind makes it real... Then Neo asks that if you die in the Matrix, then do you die for real outside the matrix? The answer was yes, because the body cannot live without the mind... I thought this bit especially resembled the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna instructs Arjun that those who die in ignorance, strongly attached to and addicted to sense enjoyment, and believing this was their only life, really do die for sure! However, those who believe that they are not just this body and the senses, and they are more than that, live on after the body dies……

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