Mantra: Om Paramatmane Namah

Haryom Tat Sat. Dear friends, welcome again to another episode on the power of sounds and mantras. I've been enjoying this experience of sharing with you what these different combinations of sounds reveal to us and I sincerely hope that you have also been practicing along with me and on your own and would love to hear from you about your experiences in this regard. So today we are going to look at another mantra which is something that we are not very familiar with normally but it is a mantra that can help to start an activity and bring it to a close at the end. So the mantra is om paramat manenama and when you are at the start of an activity you would say atha.

The word paramatma is composed of two parts, param meaning the highest and atma is the self. So this is an invocation to the highest self, paramatma and then you would notice that I said paramatmane so it means to that highest self because we say nama salutations, salutations to the paramatma, paramatmanenama. I would like to draw your attention on the pronunciation of the tea in the paramatma, it is a soft tea so it is not paramatma but paramatma, say that, paramatma, lovely, paramatmanenama. So the mantra is om paramatmanenama, paramatmanenama, lovely. So at the beginning of any activity one invokes the highest self to help us achieve whatever one wants to undertake in the best spirit possible.

Seeing that in mind we offer our salutations and then we say atha, again it is a soft tea, atha, say that, atha means and therefore so whatever proceeds would be with this respect or this remembrance of a sanction for the best to unfold itself. So om paramatmanenama, atha, repeat after me, om paramatmanenama, atha, we'll just break it down and say it slowly one more time, om paramatmanenama, atha, lovely. And at the end of a program it's like remembering that whatever happened was because of the sanction of this higher self within this activity that we performed and so in recognition of that one would say, om paramatmanenama, ithi, ithi means thus it was. The saying of ithi also allows us to drop the extra baggages that one might carry over into the rest of one's day. So thus it was, start with an invocation for the best to happen, atha and end with a recognition of whatever happened and let it be there, ithi.

So we'll do it with a particular melody and you can repeat after me, om paramatmanenama, om paramatmanenama, atha, at the end of the activity, om paramatmanenama, ithi, ithi, ithi. So experience this invocation and this offering of one's work to universal forces who want to give us the best of any activity and in recognition of that we'll end this session with together, om paramatmanenama, ithi.