Atman and Brahman

Let us be yoked in fellowship in the worship of the heavens . . . Let us too for one moment be ourselves the soul of the universe. (Unknown Turkish poet, 1920s)

Hindu Vedanta teaches about atman, the individual soul, and Brahman, the universal reality, God, soul of the universe. Advaita Vedanta holds that the universe is an illusion, that the one and only reality is Brahman, God, and that there is no separation between the individual soul and the universal soul, i.e., atman is Brahman. Other schools of Vedanta hold either a modified version of Advaita's non-dualism or a complete break into dualism. This points to the fact that the highest level of the spirit is beyond concepts or descriptions. Nevertheless, we will not be far off the mark if we view the Sacred in terms of Oneness, non-separateness, and as the basis of Love.

We are one, though our bodies are obviously separate. Yet right beneath the physical is Brahman, the source of this world, and right beneath ourselves is atman, our source. The unity of atman and Brahman means our individual source and the universal source are the same. It's there that our unity lies, in our source. Our soul and the world soul, atman and Brahman: no difference, no separation.

Reality transcends logic and Oneness does not invalidate the rightness of holding the physical universe as real, not an illusion. There are worlds: higher worlds and this ordinary world. We honor and respect them all; we give them their due. We have these bodies for a reason. The material world has a purpose. There is objective morality.

The Unity is not something for us to imagine, pretend, assume, believe in, or conjure up. It's for us to see as real right now. And toward that, to see what prevents us from seeing the Unity now, from seeing that we hold ourselves separate and assume that we are this individual separate reality. If that assumption goes, if we let it dissolve and just see, just be, then the one who is being us, who is us, is the One who is being everyone else and being the world around us. That's Atman and Brahman as One.

Atman is a projection of Brahman, a means by which Brahman manifests in the universe. There is the One Reality and there is all of us, everything in the material world: all of it arises out of the One Reality, continually. This is not just something that happened back in the Big Bang; it is an ongoing, current, moment-to-moment event. We ourselves continually emerge from this One Reality.

Dropping back into ourselves, into the root of our attention, the root of our will, the root of our Self, we come to that Greatness that appears empty. That rich, pregnant, and benevolent void, the spiritual home of our soul, that void within us and the Great Void underpinning the whole universe are both the One Spirit. When you allow yourself to merge into the transcendent silence beneath your inner stillness, you have entered the Sacred space. Each and every one of us is a manifestation of that One Spirit, yet in this very real day-to-day world we are separate. Nevertheless, beneath the veils, our universal brotherhood and sisterhood abide. Love abides.

We ourselves are non-dual, not separate in our innermost unity with All. Our spiritual path begins with the distant call of that primal Truth, and proceeds by lifting the veils that hide the One.

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