Mandukya Upanishad — Opening Verse

The Mandukya Upanishad opens with a breathtaking claim: Om is everything. The past, the present, the future — all of it is Om. And even what is beyond time is Om.

Om is not merely a sound used in puja or meditation. It is being declared here as the very fabric of existence — the sound-form of Brahman, the ultimate reality. Everything that exists is a form of Om; Om is a form of everything.

The Mandukya is the shortest Upanishad — only 12 verses — yet Adi Shankaracharya's teacher Gaudapada wrote a famous commentary on it (the Mandukya Karika), and Shankaracharya himself commented on that. Together they form one of the deepest treatments of Advaita Vedanta.

The Mandukya Upanishad belongs to the Atharvaveda. It analyses consciousness through the framework of the four states: waking (jagrat), dreaming (svapna), deep sleep (sushupti), and the fourth (turiya) — pure witness-consciousness.

The sage Gaudapada (circa 7th century CE) wrote the Mandukya Karika, which became a foundational text of Advaita Vedanta. His student's student was Adi Shankaracharya.