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Higher than the senses is the mind, higher than the mind is the intellect, higher than the intellect is the great Atman, higher than the Atman is the Unmanifested. By knowing Him, the mortal is liberated and attains immortality.
Our loose use of language might possibly lead us to call the new being a soul, but it is decidedly not an âtman, for it is something which has been brought into being by deliberate effort. The collective name for these higher states of mind is paññâ , wisdom or knowledge.
Yama having first described what the Atman is, now tells us how to attain It. man must try to subdue his lower nature and gain control over the body and senses. e must conquer the impure selfish desires which now disturb the serenity of his mind, that it may grow calm and peaceful. In other words, he must live the life and develop all spiritual qualities in order to perceive the Atman.
The Atman, however, is present everywhere; hence, though one may run with the greatest swiftness to overtake It, already It is there before him. Even the all-pervading air must be supported by this Self, since It is infinite; and as nothing can live without breathing air, all living things must draw their life from the Cosmic Self. It moves and It moves not. It is far and also It is near.
And Govinda mumbled a verse to himself, a verse from an Upanishad: He who ponderingly, of a purified spirit, loses himself in the meditation of Atman, unexpressable by words is his blissfulness of his heart. But Siddhartha remained silent. He thought about the words which Govinda had said to him and thought the words through to their end.
Connected with this doctrine is another, namely, that the whole world of phenomena is Mâyâ or illusion. Nothing really exists except the supreme Âtman: all perception of plurality and difference is illusion and error: the reality is unity, identity and rest. The development of these ideas leads to some of the principal systems of philosophy and will claim our attention later.
The Self is the bond that unites all souls, the red thread which runs through all being, and the knowledge of which alone gives us knowledge of our true nature. “Know thyself” no longer means for us “Know thy ego,” but “Know what lies beyond thy ego, know the Self,” the Self that runs through the whole world, through all hearts, the same for all men, the same for the highest and the lowest, the same for creator and creature, the Âtman of the Veda, the oldest and truest word for God.
The ordinary, and indeed inevitable translation of this word by soul leads to misunderstanding for we naturally interpret it as meaning that there is nothing which survives the death of the body and a fortiori nothing to transmigrate. But in reality the denial of the âtman applies to the living rather than to the dead.
And where was Atman to be found, where did He reside, where did his eternal heart beat, where else but in one's own self, in its innermost part, in its indestructible part, which everyone had in himself? But where, where was this self, this innermost part, this ultimate part? It was not flesh and bone, it was neither thought nor consciousness, thus the wisest ones taught. So, where, where was it?
It would be wrong to take satah as implying 'the good, the finite verses in every text being singular. The correct reading seems to be atmana as the last word of the first line, and not atman. What is said here is that the quality of passion predominates in these. Nyagrodha is the Ficus Bengalensis, Linn. Jamvu is Eugenia Jambolana, Lamk. Pippala is Ficus religiosa, Linn.
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