Whole

“ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदम् पूर्णात् पूर्णमुदच्यते ।

पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ||

ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ।।

om pūrṇamadaḥ pūrṇamidam pūrṇāt pūrṇamudacyate.

pūrṇasya pūrṇamādāya pūrṇamevāvasiṣyate.

om santih śāntih śāntih..

That is Whole and this is Whole, the perfect has come out of the perfect;

having taken the perfect from the perfect, only the perfect remains.

Let there be Peace, Peace, Peace.

(This shanti-sloka of the Isavasyopanishad indicates the relation of the individual’s soul to the divine supreme spirit).

Idam, This Pūrnam, the single noun in the verse, is a beautiful Sanskrit word which means completely filled – a filledness which (in its Vedic scriptural sense) is wholeness itself, absolute fullness lacking nothing whatsoever. Adah, which means ‘that’, and idam, which means ‘this’, are two pronouns each of which, at the same time, refers to the single noun, Purnam:

Pūrnam adah – completeness is that, Purnam idam – completeness is this.

Adah, that, is always used to refer to something remote from the speaker in time, place or understanding. Something which is remote in the sense of adah is something which, at the time in question, is not available for direct knowledge. Adah, that, refers to a jnEya vastu, a thing to be know thing which due to some kind of remoteness is not present for immediate knowledge but remains to be known upon destruction of the remoteness. Idam, this, refers to something not remote but present, here and now, immediately available for perception, something directly known or knowable. Thus it can be said that adah refers to the unknown, the unknown in the sense of the not- directly known due to remoteness, and idam refers to the immediately perceivable known.

Traditionally, however, idam has come to have a much broader meaning. Idam is stretched to stand for anything available for objectification; that is, for any object external to me which can be known by me through my means of knowledge. In this sense, idam, this, indicates all driSya, all seen or known things. Idam can be so used because all adah, all things called ‘that’ become ‘this’ as soon as their thatness, their remoteness in time, place or knowledge is destroyed. It is in this sense that the SantipAta “Purnamadah” uses idam.

The first verse of Isavasya Upanishad, following the makes clear that idam is used in the traditional sense of all driSya, all known or knowable things:

idam sarvam yat kinca jagatyAm jagat

all this, whatsoever, changing in this changing world..” Verse 1 – Isavasya Upanishad.

Given this meaning, idam, this swallows up all ‘that’s’ subject to becoming ‘this’; in other words, idam stands for all things capable of being known as objects. So when the verse says Pūrnam idam, “completeness is this”, what is being said is that all that one knows or is able to know is Purnam.

This statement is not understandable because Pūrnam means completeness, absolute fullness, wholeness. Pūrnam is that which is not away from anything but which is the fullness of everything. If Purnam is total fullness which leaves nothing out, then ‘this’ cannot be used to describe Pūrnam because ‘this’ leaves something out.

What? The subject. ‘This’ leaves out aham, I, the subject. The world ‘this’does not include I. I, the subject, is always left out when one says ‘this’. If I am not included then Purnam is not wholeness. Therefore, Pūrnam idam appears to be an untenable statem because it leaves out I

Adah, That What about the other pronoun, adah, that? What does adah mean in context? Does ‘that’ have a tenable relationship with Purnam? Since idam, this, has been used in its traditional sense of all knowable objects, here or there, presently known or unknown, the only meaning left for ‘that’ is to indicate the subject. Idam, this, stands for everything available for objectification. What is not available for objectification? The objectifier – the subject. The subject, aham, I, is the only thing not available for objectification. So, the real meaning of the pronoun adah, that, as used here in contrast to idam, this, is aham, I.

However, it was said that adah, that, indicates a jnEyavastu, something to be known; in other words, something not yet directly known because it is remote from the knower in time, placeor in terms of knowledge. If that is so, how can adah, that, mean aham, I? Am I remote? I am certainly not remote in terms of time or place. I am always here right now. But perhaps I may be remote in terms of knowledge. If in fact I do not know the true nature of myself I could be a jnEyavastu, a to-be- known, in terms of knowledge. Because it is only through the revelation of shruti (scripture functioning as means of knowledge) that I can gain knowledge of my true nature, it can be said that in general the truth of aham is remote in terms of knowledge – something that is yet to be known.”

Source: shlokam.org