ATMAN - SOUL

Atman is that part of the living being that is eternal and beyond physical description. It is the true Self, the eternal soul that dwells within but has no personal characteristics. Atman is the birth-less, death-less reality that is at once the innermost being of each person and the inmost being of all that which exists. Atman, more fully, is ‘that which pervades all; which is the subject and which knows, experiences and illuminates the subjects and which remains always the same’. In many of the Upanishads the meaning of atman is uncertain, since it may designate either the supreme and transcendent spirit or the finite individual self of man. According to Vedanta philosophy, the atman is of the same nature as the Universal Soul (Brahman), and as such seeks union with it in mystical liberation (Moksha).