Brahman and Atman

"Brahman is without a beginning and without an end and yet is within all. Brahman is cosmic spirit and infinite consciousness.  The universal principle and eternal truth.

Brahman is the divine source of everything that exists and does not exist.  Brahman is genderless and yet has a dual nature that encompasses both male and female.  The male aspect known as Purusha, “that which fills,” and the female aspect known as Shakti which means “energy” or “dynamic force.”

Jeanine Goode-Allen

When I was about eleven years old, our history class studied world religions, including Hinduism.  The only thing I remember about the class was this sentence: "Brahma is Atman, Atman is Brahma."  I thought to myself, "Well, of course.  That is obvious."  Every thing I encountered thereafter was a footnote to this observation.  I now believe that we are each a part of Brahman (God) in the way a cell or a corpuscle is part of our bodies.  It is us, and yet is by no means all of who we are.  Our spirits are part of a larger Spirit, yet by no means are we the full reality of the Mystery.

This idea of human oneness with the divine has been a point of contention throughout history.  Tolstoy wrote a book with the title "The Kingdom of God is Within You," a notion considered quite radical at the time.  Mansur Al-Hallaj (c. 858 – 26 March 922), a Persian mystic, was killed in a very brutal way for having asserted "I am Truth."  "Truth" is for Sufis one of the names of God, and his enemies contended that he had thereby claimed that he was God.  Some believe he was slain for this "heresy," but others feel he was executed for political reasons.

The traditional mystic path leads to the annihilation of the ego self into the Divine Mystery.  I believe that when we experience states of rapture we are at those moments one with the Divine Essence, which I call "the Beloved Within."  At those times it is difficult to know which is the holy flow of love from Source, and which is the familiar persona of the personal "self."  I previously wrote a poem about our union with the Beloved that concluded with this sentiment: "Our journey ended in each other."

"Brahman is Atman, Atman is Brahman"

Dorothy Walters
December 18, 2017

(image from internet)