Treasures of the Maharishi Veda App #6: In the first and last, one has the whole

This email series, ‘Treasures of the Maharishi Veda App’ was inspired by the many subscriber requests for more background on the App features. One such unique and powerful treasure—often overlooked or even unknown—is the sub-menu in the Recitation section: “40 Aspects of the Veda and Vedic Literature”.

Maharishi had arranged for esteemed Maharishi Vedic Pandits to record the first and last verses of each of the branches of the Veda and Vedic literature. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time it had ever been done.

As many will remember, Maharishi often quoted a foundational Sutra from Vyakaran: that the first and last Vedic verses contain the whole. ‘Aadir antyena sahetaa’. On some few special occasions, Maharishi also arranged for the Pandits to recite these first and last verses, this “shortcut” to the entire range of the Veda.

Maharishi had said of these 40 aspects: “All these values of the Wholeness of Intelligence, what a tremendous unbounded sphere of knowledge! And that is everyone’s life, inner and outer.” The great value in listening to these recitations is to open our awareness to the totality of this supreme reality.

Fittingly, the very last verse of Rk Veda is what we all would wish to be the daily experience of everyone in the world. ‘United be your purpose, harmonious be your feelings, collected be your mind, in the same way as all aspects of the universe exist in togetherness, wholeness.’