The Whole gives rise to parts, yet is beyond them || Acharya Prashant (2014)

Speaker: Parts change, the whole remains unchanged.

First of all, this whole, that is being talked of, is not a sum of the parts. Usually, when we refer to a whole, what we mean is, that there are the parts and when they are taken together, we get the whole.

In the existential sense, the whole is not the sum of the parts. The whole is from where all the parts emerge and yet the whole remains whole.

In the mathematical sense, in the worldly sense, when a part is disassociated from the whole, then something reduces from the whole. In the existential sense, the whole remains whole even after manifesting all the parts. The whole has infinite potency to express even more parts, after all the parts have been expressed.

So, when it is said that the parts change, the whole remains unchanged, what is meant is, that the whole alone exists. It is neither reducible nor can it be augmented. There is nothing that the parts can do to it, for all the parts exists within it.

Even in absence of all the parts, the whole is still there; even in the presence of all the parts, the whole is still there. Actually, the parts are not present, only the whole is present. What appears as the part is the inability of the part to see the whole. Otherwise, there are actually no parts, there is only the whole.