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Updated: June 18, 2025
The first of them identifies the human soul with the supreme and only Being. The doctrine of Saṃsâra holds that different forms of existence may be phases of the same soul and thus prepares the way for the doctrine that all forms of existence are the same and all souls parts of, or even identical with the Âtman or Self, the divine soul which not only pervades the world but is the world.
The grammatical form of the word Yoga as here employed is exceptional. The first atman is explained as the soul, the second as the body, by all the commentators. Taking means taking anything with the hands. Water when thrown over a lotus-leaf escapes without soaking or drenching the leaf at all.
He who has not turned away from evil conduct, whose senses are uncontrolled, who is not tranquil, whose mind is not at rest, he can never attain this Atman even by knowledge.
The Âtman is to be seen, to be heard, to be perceived, to be marked: by him who has seen and known the Âtman all the universe is known.... He who looks for Brahmans, warriors, worlds, gods or Vedas anywhere but in the Âtman, loses them all...."
When the Vedantist says "Aham Brahmasmi" "I am the absolute" he does not mean this lower "I". No, no. He is not built that way. For him the moorings of self-consciousness are out. He has lost all sense of his particular relative "I" and has one-d himself with the absolute "I AM" the impersonal, intangible, immortal, omnipotent Self of and over all. This "I am" is Spirit or Atman.
How is it? 'It is salt. 'Taste from the bottom, how is it? 'It is salt. ... The father said, 'Here also in this body you do not perceive the Real, but there it is. That subtle being by which this universe subsists, it is the Real, it is the Âtman and thou, Svetaketu, art It."
Whatever you say of it, the answer must be neti, neti, it is not like that ; that is to say, the ordinary language used about the individual soul is not applicable to the Âtman or to the human soul when regarded as identical with it.
"He who is himself alone, who has known the secret of bliss, who has firmly embraced peace, who is magnanimous and whose feelings other than those of the atman, have been allayed, that person sports on his pleasant couch of self-bliss."
But there is no second, nothing else different from him that he could know." A common formula for Brahman in the later philosophy is Saccidânanda, Being, Thought and Joy . This is a just summary of the earlier teaching. We have already seen how the Âtman is recognized as the only Reality. Its intellectual character is equally clearly affirmed. This is thy Self, the ruler within, the immortal.
Eagerness to retain consciousness of the personal self blocks the way of Illumination which uncovers the real, the greater, the higher Self the atman. This constant adjuration to sink the self into The Absolute, is what has given rise to so much difference of interpretation as to the meaning of mukti, liberation.
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