Oxygen, with O as the symbol and 8 as the atomic number, has been part of the gaseous cover enveloping the earth that is scientifically estimated to have come into existence about 2.6 billion years ago. 

But it was only in 1773 and 1774 that two scientists, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, a German-Swedish chemist, and Joseph Priestley, an English chemist, independently isolated it while it was left to a third scientist, Antoine Lavoisier of France, to give it a name and an identity three years later.

Scientists like them have found that Oxygen constitutes 21 per cent of the atmosphere and that being a highly reactive element and oxidizing agent it is the most abundant element on the earth’s crust. Oxygen accounts for as much as 46.6 per cent, or nearly half,  of the crust which has a thickness ranging from 4.8 to 69km. In the oceans dissolved oxygen is found at the rate of seven to eight milligrams per every litre.

And Oxygen, it is well known, is essential for the process of creation and for the sustenance of life.  Without Oxygen no life can come into being, and without Oxygen no life can be sustained. And cessation of the supply of Oxygen means death. It applies not only to humans. All plants, animals and fungi need Oxygen for cellular growth.

In other words, the Atmospheric Air containing life giving Oxygen is literally the Trinity for all life on earth, the Trinity we all revere. It is the Creator, it is the Preserver and it is the Destroyer of all life as well.

In one sense we wallow in Oxygen, from our birth to our last breath. It is inside us, every second of our life, as also all around us. Oxygen is not only a constant presence in our lungs through the perennial process of inhalation and exhalation, but it spreads through our bodily sinews to the last cell, helping cell growth, that is helping us grow from infancy to childhood to teens to youth to middle age to the end of time for us in old age.

Is not this Oxygen in the Atmospheric Air that is extolled in the Upanishads? The Upanishads describe Paramatma or Brahma as a formless, shapeless entity enveloping the earth like a protective sheath.  Air is formless and shapeless, and it encompasses the world, truly as a protective sheath. Are they not one and the same?

All the famous four Mahavakyas of Upanishads point to a perpetual relationship between the individual Self and the Ultimate Reality of the universe, or in Upanishadic terms between Jivatma and Paramatma. 

If we transpose the breathing Self and the Atmospheric Air containing life giving Oxygen for Jivatma and Paramatma, we will find that there is interaction between the two every second of an individual’s life, in the form of inhalation and exhalation. The first breath of the newborn comes after the all-encompassing Atmospheric Air forcefully bears down upon it, filling its lungs and reaching out to its sinews everywhere in the body. That is the beginning of a beautiful, sustained, esoteric relationship between Soul and Super-soul or Atma and Paramatma, or in practical terms, our life and the life-giving Air in the Atmosphere. 

Consider the Mahavakyas Tat Tvam Asi (Thou art that or you are that) of Chandogya Upanishad and Aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahma) of Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, both meaning that the individual Self and the Absolute are one and he same. 

So true with the Oxygen containing Air that is within us as it is outside, a relationship that is never snapped till the last exhalation. And after the last exhalation the Air within us merges with the Air outside, just as, according to the Upanishads, Atma merges in Paramatma or Brahma.

That life giving Air is Paramatma of which all humans all over the world, that is humans of all regions and all religions, form an integral, inalienable part, sharing, every second of their life, a universal legacy they never understand.

Aham Brahmasmi.