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In all older languages, the words used to designate the element bound up with breathing, or the act of breathing, served at the same time to express the relationship of man to the Divine, or even the Divine itself. One need think only of the words Brahma and Atma of the ancient Indians, the Pneuma of the Greeks, the Spiritus of the Romans.
The most extraordinary instance of this is his explanation of the celebrated phrase in the Chândogya Upanishad Sa âtmâ tat tvam asi. He reads Sa âtmâ atat tvam asi and considers that it means "You are not that God. Why be so conceited as to suppose that you are?" Monotheistic texts have often received a mystical and pantheistic interpretation.
It is Manas, the animal intelligence, and the animal soul or Jiva, both half material illusions, that sin and suffer and transmigrate from one body into the other till they purify themselves. The spirit merely overshadows their earthly transmigrations. When the Ego has reached the final state of purity, it will be one with the Atma, and gradually will merge and disappear in Parabrahm.
Being unwilling to abide alone in this discovery and in these convictions, he established, in 1815, the "Atmâ Sabhâ," or "Soul Society," in his own home. This soon developed into a small church, for which a suitable edifice was erected, that they might worship the one God free from the contaminating influence of popular idolatry and Hindu ceremonial.
Consciousness, Buddhi and Atma are practically the same as the manasa, prana, and ether, each to each, only the latter are differentiated and the former are not. Each of the three astral globes is the reflection in matter of the three spiritual globes beyond, each to each, and all to all. The difference between matter and spirit is a difference in Motion only.
By what physiological doctrines this is upheld, cannot here be traced; but the notion of the atma, the great form of which in Brahma is identical with its small form in man, lies at the basis of Brahmanic thought. In Brahma one god has been reached, but he has been reached by thinking away from him everything concrete.
He is a thinker, a knower, he is the "Mahan Atma" or great spirit, which sits in unbroken calm above the change and distraction of the universe. In rendering Mahan Atma by great spirit, however, we are anticipating. Atma, originally breath or life, comes, afterwards, to mean the person, the self when all that is accidental is removed from it, the essential, innermost self.
Thus both Sreedhara and Sankara. Chitta the mind and atma in this connection is the senses. Thus both Sreedhara and Sankara. Sacrifice means here the Supreme Soul. What is done for the sake of sacrifice is done for procuring emancipation.
Chitta and atma are explained by the commentators as "mind and body." Fixed on one's own self, i.e., withdrawn from all objects of sense. Thus Sankara. Nischayena is explained by Sankara as equivalent to "with preservence" or steadily. Sreedhara explains it as equal to "with the certitude of knowledge acquired by instruction."
It is hard enough to get a fair knowledge of our organism, its physical constitution, its intellectual faculties, and its moral tendencies; but the task is absolutely appalling when, we have to get a satisfactory knowledge of our Atma, our Buddhi, our Manas, our Kama, our Prana, our Linga Sharira, and our Sthula Sharira. Anyone who can master all that may as well go on unto seventy times seven.
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