Paramatma Meaning

Paramatma Meaning

The term paramatma consist of two words

• parama
• atma

It is a Sanskrit compound word. The bare meaning is Supreme Spirit, Supreme Self. However, in that usage which is the most common usage in Sanskrit literature, the term atma is vague which means that one has to sort to know exactly what the writer intends.

Parama is simple. It is a superlative adjective for the highest, the greatest, the best. Atma has to be translated and understood according to the context of the writer. One should not assume that the writer uses atma only in the way one is familiar.

There was a feud about this word in the debate between Mandana Mishra and Adi Shankara. In that debate Shankar ripped Mandana Mishra to shreds with the idea that paramatma means only that the observing self is superior to the intellect which that very self uses.

To support this idea, Adi Shankara cited the story from the Upanishad about the two birds on the tree, with one of the birds being the superior bird simply because it does not eat and participate in sensual acquisition, while the other birth the inferior one is always engaged in sensual quest.

Shankara presented the idea that it was not true that the superior bird was the paramatma or God and inferior birth was the limited self or atma. In other words, Shankara stated that the two birds cited in the Upanishads was not a comparison of the behavior of the God as compared to the limited self but rather it was a comparison of the self (atma) and the intellect.

If we accept this then it means that Shankara has changed the meaning of the term atma where that is the intellect and the term paramatma was the self which does not get involved in sensual activities.

This does not make any sense, and yet Shankara’s arguments in the debate were so shocking that Mandana Mishra did not know what to say. In every argument they had Shankara changed meanings of terms and Mandana was left in the shade. Shankara successfully twisted formal meanings and upended Mandana’s reputation as the greatest debater of his time.

However, let us consider that if we accept the idea of Shankara, then it means that atma must be translated as intellect and paramatma as the self or particular self, as the greatest governor in the body, the supreme factor, greater than even the intellect.

Shankara’s proposal also leaves us in a dilemma because on one hand we admit that we enjoy and are affected but he declared that we do not. He says that the intellect enjoy and the self does not. That leaves much to be explained.

However, this article presents that if one uses the term paramatma for the limited non-involved self and one uses atma for the intellect which is involved eating fruits like the inferior of the two birds, then one has to explain that is how one uses those terms.

No standard Sanskrit dictionary will give that meaning. One must state it to be clear. In addition, in Bhagavad Gita, the term paramatma is used to mean the limited self but only once, in reference to the adjuncts in the psyche, where that self is not involved in the same way as the intellect. And this is a rare use of the word. Elsewhere in the same Gita the term paramatma means Krishna or God. And that is the common usage.

Shankara was born to push the word atma into becoming the word brahman. He spent his life doing this. His conquest of pandits all over India and then of Mandana Mishra whom he humiliated, proves that. But no matter what he said and no matter what anyone says who is aware of Shankara or who is not aware of him, if one uses the term paramatma for atma, one should stop and ask this question:

What is the word for the detached observing self, if atma is the intellect.

Why is the term parama being used if it does not mean superior or supreme?

Shankara’s idea that there is no Paramatma Supreme Self, and that this self is the atma which by mental realization will know itself as brahman the Supreme Reality, dismissed the majority of the Bhagavad Gita meaning for paramatma, where that special somebody, Krishna, is presented as the distinct Supreme Spirit.

Shankara presented an atma which is supposed to be superior to its intellect, where that atma does not participate in activities which are indulged by the intellect. The view of the Bhagavad Gita, that there is a limited self in each psyche, an atma, and that resident with it is the Supreme Self, the paramatma, who is detachedly looking at the involved limited self, is rejected by Shankara who practically laughed Mandana Mishra out of the debate.

It was a low but effective punch by Shankara, who shamed Mandana into becoming Shankara’s disciple. But the Bhagavad Gita which Shankara twisted into his submission does not present a self and an intellect as detached observer and as involved entity.

Gita gives us three realities beginning with the intellect, then the atma affected self and the paramatma unaffected supreme self. These three, not two, reside in the individual psyche but with the atma affected self indulging because it does not have the power to resist the allurements which are displayed by the intellect, and there exists side by side but in a different dimension, the paramatma unaffected supreme self who notices what the atma limited person is subjected to but who remains segregated from the conundrums of the intellect which influences the limited person.

The great farce of Shankara is to suggest that the atma self is not affected by the shenanigans of the intellect, when in fact that is the very reason for the self’s aspiration for liberation.