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Updated: May 18, 2025
The Self or Atman holds the position of ruler in this city; and being above the modifications of birth, death and all human imperfections, It is not affected by the changes of the physical organism.
This identity is stated more precisely in another passage where first occurs the celebrated formula Tat tvam asi, That art Thou, or Thou art It , i.e. the human soul is the Âtman and hence there is no real distinction between souls.
It thought, may I be many: may I have offspring. It sent forth fire." Here follows a cosmogony and an explanation of the constitution of animate beings, and then the father continues "All creatures have their root in the Real, dwell in the Real and rest in the Real. That subtle being by which this universe subsists, it is the Real, it is the Âtman, and thou, Śvetaketu, art It."
Both are the farthest possible abstraction that the mind can make. The Absolute Soul of Buddhism, the Atman of Brahmanism, and Hegel's Nothing are the farthest possible remove from the Christian's conception of God. The former is the utter emptiness of being; the latter the perfect fullness of being and completeness of quality.
And the meaning will be true if the use squares well with life's other uses. Well, the use of the Absolute is proved by the whole course of men's religious history. The eternal arms are then beneath. Remember Vivekananda's use of the Atman: it is indeed not a scientific use, for we can make no particular deductions from it. It is emotional and spiritual altogether.
The word most commonly rendered by soul is âtman but no one definition can be given for it, for some hold that the soul is identical with the Universal Spirit, others that it is merely of the same nature, still others that there are innumerable souls uncreate and eternal, while the Buddhists deny the existence of a soul in toto.
In the third chapter Yama defines what part of our being dies and what part is deathless, what is mortal and what is immortal. But the Atman, the Higher Self, is so entirely beyond human conception that it is impossible to give a direct definition of It. Only through similies can some idea of It be conveyed.
The words demand closer attention, and I must invite those of my readers who have been driven back by the difficulties of the road to accompany me along the dull path of literal translation and comment. The keynote of the dialogue is the opposition of day and night, typifying delusion and reality, avidya and Atman.
A wise man never confounds the Atman, which is birthless and deathless, with that which has beginning and end. Therefore, when he sees his senses and his physical organism waxing and waning, he knows that his real Self within can never be affected by these outer changes, so he remains unmoved.
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