ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते
oṁ pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idaṁ
pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate
pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya
pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate
Synonyms
om—the Complete Whole; pūrṇam—perfectly complete; adaḥ—that; pūrṇam—perfectly complete; idam—this phenomenal world; pūrṇāt—from the all perfect; pūrṇam—complete unit; udacyate—produced; pūrṇasya—of the Complete Whole; pūrṇam—completely all; ādāya—having been taken away; pūrṇam—the complete balance; eva—even; avaśiṣyate—is remaining.
Translation
The Personality of Godhead is perfect and complete. And because He is completely perfect, all emanations from Him, such as this phenomenal world, are perfectly equipped as a complete whole. Whatever is produced of the complete whole is also complete by itself. And because He is the Complete Whole, even though so many complete units emanate from Him, He remains the complete balance. [& Bṛhad-āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 5.1]
Purport
The Complete Whole, or the Supreme Absolute Truth, is the complete Personality of Godhead. Impersonal Brahman forms an incomplete realization of the Absolute Complete, and so also does the conception of Paramātman, the Supersoul. The Supreme Personality of Godhead is sac-cid-ānanda-vigraha: impersonal Brahman realization is the realization of His sat, or eternity aspect, and Paramātman, Supersoul realization, is the realization of His sat and cit, eternity and knowledge aspects. But realization of the Personality of Godhead is realization of all the transcendental features, sat, cit, and ānanda, or bliss. In the Personal concept, this is realized in complete form (vigraha). And so the Complete Whole is not formless. If He is formless, or if He is less than His creation in any other thing, He cannot be complete. The Complete Whole must have everything, both within our experience and beyond our experience. Otherwise He cannot be complete.
The Complete Whole Personality of Godhead has immense potencies, and all of them are as complete as He is. Therefore this phenomenal or material world is also complete by itself. The twenty-four elements of which this material universe is a temporary manifestation are completely adjusted to produce complete things necessary for the maintenance and subsistence of this universe. No extraneous effort by any other unit is required for this maintenance. The universe has its own time, fixed by the energy of the Complete Whole, and when that time is complete this temporary manifestation will be annihilated by the complete arrangement of the Complete.
There is complete facility for the small complete units, namely the living beings, to realize the Complete; and all forms of incompleteness are experienced only on account of incomplete knowledge of the Complete. The human form of life is a complete manifestation of the consciousness of the living being, which is obtained after evolving through 8,400,000 species of life in the cycle of birth and death. If a human being does not realize his completeness within the Complete in this life of full consciousness, he loses the chance of realizing his completeness, and is put again into the cycle of evolution by the law of material Nature.
Because we do not know that there is a complete arrangement in Nature for our maintenance, we make efforts to utilize the resources of Nature to create a so-called complete life of sense enjoyment. This misleading life of sense-enjoyment is called illusion, because the living entity cannot enjoy the life of the senses without being dovetailed with the Complete Whole. For example, the hand of a body is a complete unit as long as it is attached to the complete body. When the hand is detached from the body, it may appear like a hand, but actually it has none of the potency of a hand. Similarly, the living beings are parts and parcels of the Complete Whole; and as long as the parts and parcels are detached from the Complete Whole, the illusory representation of completeness is not enough to bring the desired result.
The completeness of human life can only be realized when the human form of life is engaged in the service of the Complete Whole. Any service in this world, whether social, political, communal, international, or even inter-planetary, will remain incomplete unless and until it is dovetailed with the Complete Whole. And, when everything is dovetailed with the Complete Whole, the attached parts and parcels also become complete in themselves.