It should be pointed out that the first lines of this Upanin?ad are commonly called ?anti—mantras, or mantras of peace. It is an ancient Vedic tradition that every Upani?ad, in general, must begin and end with these most powerful ?anti—mantras.

THE PART AND THE WHOLE

The ego consists of the illusion of the wave, believing himself to be an entity separate from the ocean, the illusion of believing oneself to be a part, separate from the Whole. Human misery originates with the efforts of the part to resist the Whole. Believing ourselves to be a part, we will always feel that we lack many things, we will miss the rest of what we are, and we will feel that we lack something needed to be whole... Therefore, together with our resistance to the Whole, we feel a deep sensation of being incomplete, of missing something. From a very young age, since our childhood, a sensation is born in us that we are lacking something in order to be happy. We see our older brother coming back from school and we say to ourselves: "When I go to school, there I will indeed enjoy myself". However, the day comes to start going to school, we enter first grade and slowly we begin to understand that it was not exactly what was missing, maybe quite the contrary. Slowly, over the course of years, we start to nourish the idea that when we go to high school, then it will be different, then we will find "what was missing", then I will be happy. Once again, when we start going to high school we see that it was not that what we needed. And then we think that although here we aren't enjoying ourselves, but, at the university... that so—yearned—for university, there indeed we shall finally enjoy ourselves, there we shall find that which we needed so much. Well, I don't think I have to tell you that this story goes on repeating itself, with the work, the girlfriend, the husband, the children, the house, the family, the business, until finally you find those who are waiting to reach their retirement in order to start enjoying or to finally find that which they were missing so much...

The thing is that the human being lives with the anxiety that he needs something to be completed. This something that he looks for in careers, competitions, contests, Olympics, and lotteries, whether running after a title like the most beautiful in the universe, or a running after a stupid ball in order to win some cup or at least a medal. Why? We feel that we are lacking something... we feel that we are missing something... our sensation of shortage and imperfection comes from ignorance, our ignorance about ourselves and what we really are.

P?R?A? OR THE TOTALITY

O? p?r?amada? p?r?amida?

The term "P?r?am" literally means "Complete", "Whole" or "Totality". This word can be also translated as "Infinite", because only the totality, as such, is necessarily infinite, just like it is only one and undivided. The ??stras or vedic scriptures refer to it as "Brahman".

All the diverse religions have their own differences of theological character, however, all and every one of them, in their own way, refer to God as The Totality or The Whole. In Judaism, for example, we find that phrase that says "Shma Israel Adonay Eloheinu Adonay Echad", which means, "Hear Israel, The Lord is our God, the Lord is One", obviously referring to the indivisibility of the Whole. In Islam, we find the famous phrase of "Alla U' akbar" meaning "God is great", referring to the fact that God is so great, so infinite that He includes everything. Similarly in the great majority of religions, we are taught that God is omnipresent, which means that there is no place where God is not found. This means that if I really existed as an individual entity separate from God, as a part, as a fragment, I would be a real entity, and there would be a place where God is not found. This would supposedly be a place occupied by this "I". If I exist as a reality separate from the Whole, it will no longer be the Whole or the Totality, because then what would exist would be the Whole minus "I", which would not be, evidently, the Whole. What I am trying to explain here is the truth that the invocation of this Upani?ad illuminates. Only the Whole really is. We can refer to it as life, existence, the reality, the totality, the whole, the Self, the absolute consciousness and so forth, although in fact what we are speaking about I would like to express with the word God.

It is not possible to explain God in words, in the same way that it is not possible to define existence. In order to refer to the Whole or the Totality in some way, it would be indispensable that the one who describes the Whole could situate himself outside of the Whole, with the objective of describing it, relating to it, speaking about it or at least referring to it. The problem is that if it is really the Whole, it will necessarily include whoever it is that wishes to refer to it. In other words, in order to be able to refer to the Whole it will be indispensable for me to have the possibility to situate myself outside of Whole. However, this is obviously impossible. It is also impossible, obviously, to capture the infinite or the eternal through our limited senses and mind. For this reason Hinduism, just like many other religions, offers the means to focus our attention and concentrate on the absolute, according to our own inclinations and nature. For the Adwaita, this dual world of names and forms is lacking any objective reality and forms nothing but a superimposition on reality. From the absolute perspective, this dual and relative world is false and illusory.

THIS IS THE WHOLE, THAT IS THE WHOLE

Man has been and is searching for God, the Truth and Enlightenment, and as he hadn't found it, he has imagined and dreamed it. The problem is that many are those who have turned aside to pursue their own dreams and imaginations, completely parting from the path of the reality. To search for God is not to go after some distant being found in a star or planet out of the material universe. In other words, it is not to search for something that is not found here and is found there, it is not to go after "something" or "someone", but after the Whole.

The Upani?adic ??is, or sages of ancient India, came to tell us long ago that there is no such thing as one world or material reality, and another reality of a spiritual kind, there is no such thing as this material world and another world of absolute or transcendental nature, but that reality, life or existence, is one and indivisible...

P?r?am ada? p?r?am ida?...

Ida? means "this" and ada? means "that". In both cases the text refers to the same Whole, Complete Totality or P?r?am. "That" refers to the unknown, that which is very far from the speaker's ability of perception, and it does not speak of distance in kilometers or remoteness in time and space. The Pure Consciousness is sought very far from you, despite its nearness. The Self, the very center and essence of your existence, although it is closer to you than yourself, is tremendously far in terms of realization. "That" refers to the unknown, the unmanifest. Ida? or "this" refers to the objective and dual reality that can be perceived through the mind and the senses. This is completely confirmed in the following verse, the first mantra of this Upani?ad, where we read: ???v?sya? ida? sarva? yat kiñca jagaty?? jagat, which clarifies that here ida? refers to the world of forms and names, which can be captured by any person from the state of identification with the body, the mind and the senses. In other words, it refers to the objective reality of any person in his ordinary state of individualized consciousness. For the part, the objective world, there will always be "this" or "that". However, the only thing which is impossible to objectivize, the only thing that it is completely impossible to refer to as an object is the "objectivizer", that is to say, the "Self"...

Our true and authentic reality belongs to the unknown and unmanifest reality... You... what you really are, is the unknown for you... It is incredible to think and pay attention to the fact that the greatest mystery of existence is you...

because just as the Ch?ndogya Upani?ad (6.8.7.) says, in the dialogue between Udd?laka and his son ?vetaketu, in what will become one of the greatest mahavakyas of Adwaita Ved?nta Hinduism, tat tvam asi... "thou art that"...

Moreover, when in the Bhagavad—g?ta (13.2) Lord K???a refers to the physical body as the field, he speaks of it as ida? or "this"...

?r?—bhagav?n uv?ca

ida? ?ar?ra? kaunteya

k?etram ity abhidh?yate

etad yo vetti ta? pr?hu?

k?etra—jña iti tad—vida?

"The Blessed Lord said: "O, son of Kunt?, this body is called the field, and the one who knows it is called the knower of the field, by those who know both of them".

This Upani?adic truth can also be found in the B?had?ra?yaka Upani?ad (2.3.1.) where it says clearly: "There are two different forms of Brahman, the coarse and the subtle, the mortal and the immortal, the limited and the unlimited, the definite and the indefinite".

One of the greatest obstacles to delving into Adwaita philosophy is that the great majority of our questions and mysteries come from a level in which we are identified with a part. While we see ourselves as a part it is absolutely impossible to try to capture the Whole, the Totality. While we see ourselves as a part of the Totality, wherever we look we inevitably see a part, and this is the reason why we always find contradictions. It's like this story about the group of blind men who were brought to touch an elephant. Every one of them developed their own concept about what an elephant was, according to the part of the animal they were touching. The mind constantly goes and divides between day and night, inhalation and exhalation, etc. etc., due to the fact the very base of the ego is the illusion of seeing himself as a piece. If we refer to the Whole while seeing ourselves as a part, it will be impossible to understand how is it possible for the Whole to be "this" or "that" without including or comprising the one who refers to him, or to the one who indicates him. The Whole can neither be more something or someone, nor less something or someone. This mantra can be really understood only when we don't try to refer to the Whole from the position of the part, but when we try to observe the part, "this" and "that", ida? and ada?, from the Whole. Only then will you be able to notice the tremendous wisdom and the great truth of this text. This is why I say that this Upani?ad directs us from its very beginning to situate ourselves in the Totality, realize the Totality, be Totality. The complete Whole comprises in it the manifest and the unmanifest, the objective and the subjective. There cannot be the Totality minus something or plus something, because from that moment on it will stop being the unlimited and infinite. This mantra speaks in an inclusive way, when it says that this is indeed the Whole, and that is the Whole, "that" is P?r?a?, which includes the universe, "this" is P?r?a?, which includes me. This text has to be seen as a Whole without separating "this" from "that". This Whole includes that Whole, that Whole includes this Whole... so only The Whole really is...

Delving into this mantra reveals the great truth that the Adwaita Ved?nta expounds. Reality cannot be divided in two, existence is not dual, it is the Totality... When observing it, at first sight it appears that the ocean and its waves are two different realities, in the same way that it might seem to us that the world we see reflected in a mirror is one world and that the other, in which we move, is another...

FROM THAT WHOLE, THIS WHOLE IS MANIFESTED

The following phrase of the invocation is... p?r??t p?r?am udacyate... "from that Whole, this Whole is manifested"...

Although when we sit on the beach to watch the sea we see waves, froth and bubbles, in the end, we know that the ocean is water, and because it is water, all that is born from it will essentially be... water...

Similarly, what comes from the Whole, will necessarily be Whole, in the sense that it cannot exist out of the Whole... This is not easy to accept for the mind, especially because of what follows, in this mantra...

"When this Whole is extracted, that Whole remains the Whole". In the mathematics that we are used to, this proves unacceptable. That is to say, if I have a hundred and give twenty I remain with the same hundred. However, the spiritual mathematics, those of the interior reality, of the soul... function differently, in the same way that if there is love in you, although you give and offer all your love, not only doesn't the love in your heart diminish, but it even grows...

The more you love, the more your love increases... expands...

The more love you give, more love you possess... The more you love, the more you will feel that your heart is not able to withstand so much love, that it will explode in another moment...

In ordinary mathematics, if all I have is a hundred and I give a hundred... I remain with nothing...

In the math of the soul, if you give all the love that you can give... you don't remain with it all... but the Whole remains with you...

SYNCHRONIZING WITH THE TOTALITY

From its very beginning, the ??avasya Upani?ad invites us to become synchronized with, or in tune with, the Whole. It invites us to a search for being and living in Totality, or Totally, rather than to a process of development of a certain kind of virtue or perfectionism, which is always found in the future, in a tomorrow as the goal or the end of a process in time. Religion, beginning with this mantra, does not consist of trying to be as you should have been, or of making efforts in order to be what it is supposed that you should have been, but of being what you truly are, what you have always been, what you will always be... Live totally, and the more totally you live, the more synchronized you will be with the Whole or the Totality. The part is the ego, the Totality is God. The part can conceive a very big God, an immense God, a gigantic God, but only a "part God". True religion is to disappear, because it is the dissolution of what you think you are in the Whole... for one who really sees, everything is that or everything is this, in the sense that these points of view, relative to the idea of "I", do not exist, only the Whole, P?r?a?, Brahman, really is...

??NTI? ??NTI? ??NTI?

In the end of this invocation we see the word ??nti? three times, because the intention of the disciple consists of asking for protection when facing the different levels of suffering and obstacles that arise in life and obstruct our apprenticeship. These aspects are: adhibhautika, adhidaivika and adhy?tmika, cosmic, divine and human...

1. Adhibhautika (cósmic): refers to that affliction which comes from the pancabh?ta, or nature's five basic elements, the interaction of the three gu?as, or the three modes of the material nature., Also included in this category are obstacles and afflictions caused by other entities, such as microorganisms, reptiles, wild beasts or human beings.

2. Adhidaivika (divine): Suffering for reasons of a "supernatural" character (although I never liked the term very much, because after all, everything is natural), such as the anger of the gods or other powerful superior entities or devas, because of our ignoring religious principles.

3. Adhyatmika (human): This refers to troubles of the body itself in the physical level, because of diverse mental and psychological derangements caused by jealousy, envy, greed, anger, wrath, hatred, and so forth.

I would like to close my commentary to this most beautiful mantra with the wise words of Mah?tma Gandhi who said about this very verse:

"If all the Upani?ads and all the rest of the scriptures were all of a sudden reduced to ashes, and only the first verse of the ??avasya Upani?ad was to remain in the memory of the hindus, Hinduism was to live forever".

(Mah?tma Gandhi 1869 — 1948)