Atman

Atman is the innermost self of every living being: the steady witness that stays the same through childhood, old age, joy and grief. Hindu thought separates it from the body, the senses and the restless mind, and treats knowing it as the doorway to freedom.

What atman means

The word is often traced to roots meaning “to breathe” or “to pervade”, and in the Upanishads it points to the core of a person that is not built from parts. The body ages, moods change and memories fade, yet something in us keeps saying “I am”. That something is atman. It is not the personality or the ego; it is what makes any experience known at all.

Atman in the Bhagavad Gita

The teaching begins when Krishna answers a grieving Arjuna. Verse 2.13 compares the passage from youth to old age with the passage from one body to another, and 2.20 says the self is never born and never dies. 2.22 gives the picture of a person changing worn clothes for new ones. Later, 6.5 asks each person to lift the self by the self, and 15.7 calls the living soul a part of the Lord. The whole argument is laid out in Chapter 2.

Atman and Brahman

How atman relates to Brahman, the ultimate reality, is where the schools part ways. Shankara’s Advaita holds that they are one and the same. Ramanuja teaches that the self is distinct yet forms a body of the Lord. Madhva holds that the two stay eternally different. All three agree that the self is not the body and that its true nature is consciousness.

Why atman matters

If the self does not perish with the body, then grief, fear of death and clinging to status all lose some of their grip. The idea also underlies the path of karma and rebirth (samsara) and the goal of moksha, which is the self knowing itself as it truly is.

Atman is taught in the Upanishads and, most memorably, in the second chapter of the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna explains that the self is never born and never dies.