ਆਤਮਾ ਅਤੇ ਬ੍ਰਹਿਮ: ਅਦ੍ਵੈਤ ਵੇਦਾਂਤ ਵਿੱਚ ਵਿਅਕਤੀਗਤ ਆਤਮਾ ਬਨਾਮ ਬ੍ਰਹਿਮੰਡੀ ਚੇਤਨਾ

Atman: What the Upanishads Mean by the True Self

The word Atman comes from the root an, meaning to breathe, but in the Upanishadic literature it has been elevated far beyond the physical breath to mean the innermost self — the witness of all experience, the awareness in which all mental events arise and dissolve. The Mandukya Upanishad opens with the declaration: 'All this is indeed Brahman. This Atman is Brahman.' The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (one of the oldest and longest of the principal Upanishads) develops the teaching through the dialogue between the sage Yajnavalkya and his wife Maitreyi. When she asks what makes the husband dear to the wife, the children dear to the parents, wealth dear to the wealthy, Yajnavalkya answers: nothing is loved for its own sake. Everything is loved for the sake of the Atman — the self — which is the source of all love, all value, all being. The Atman is not a small thing inside the body, like a ghost in a machine. The Upanishads describe it as smaller than the smallest (anor aniyan) and greater than the greatest (mahato mahiyan). It is not bound by space, time, or causation. It does not grow old, does not die, is not born, does not travel, and cannot be harmed. The Katha Upanishad's dialogue between the boy Nachiketa and Yama (Death himself) returns again and again to this paradox: the Atman cannot be killed even by Death, because it was never born. It is not a product of evolution, of genetics, of experience. It is the precondition of all experience.