Atman is Brahman

Saraswati Markus, creator of and leader of the Himalayan Yoga Yatras, held an inaugural retreat at her newly emerging ashram last weekend in Asheville, NC. The retreat was also a reunion for folks who have traveled with (or will be traveling with) her on trips to India to follow in the footsteps of Ram Dass. I am grateful to have attended this beautiful retreat as both a participant and as a teacher of daily yoga sessions. (If you'd like to go to India with Saraswati, me, and the wonderful Pintu Kumar in March 2025, registration is now live! Spaces are already filling.)

Let's pause for a moment and look at the paragraph you just read. Saraswati has been identified as a "creator" and as a "leader" and as an owner of an ashram. I've been identified as a "participant" and a "teacher." Pintu has been identified as "wonderful." Saraswati, me, and past and future attendees have all been identified as travelers. We could think of these identifiers as roles that we play or assume. All of us play many, many roles, and they often become our "fixed" identity. And we typically see others only as their roles too. We forget that what we ALL really are are souls, we're just souls playing roles.

Ram Dass, in his wonderful book Polishing the Mirror: How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart, writes:

 "Because of the pull of the incarnation, we get so deeply into our roles that we forget we are souls. With all the sensations, emotions, and complications of being in a body, all the desires, we forget. We think, 'I am a man. I am a woman. I am from California. I am a mother, a father, a widow, a child' --a something. 'I've always got to be something, don't I?' Think of all the ways you identify yourself with what you do: 'I am a teacher. I am a doctor. I'm a scientist. I'm a cook, a Jew or Chritian or Muslim, a stockbrocker. I'm an achiever. I am a spiritual seeker.' --That one can carry you for years--'I am retired.' All that is ego, who you think you are, the cluster of thoughts about how you identify yourself, thoughts about different roles that you play in society. When we meet someone we ask, 'How do you do? And what do you do?' But is what you do the same as who you are? Every one of our roles is a thought form. We confuse our souls with our roles. You don't see me as a soul. You see me as Ram Dass, as a body, a role. What does it matter whether I am a cellist, or a pilot, or a teacher? When you strip away the roles, this outer form is just the body. Who I am is just here. Instead of 'How do you do' how about, 'How do you be?' Our inner being is beyond form" (pp.115-16).

The "inner being" Ram Dass refers to is our Atman, our soul. We might think of it as a little drop of divine that is found within us--that which is our True Nature, our true Self, or Brahman. Our true Self is Brahman, as Brahman is all that is. Atman is Brahman. Sri Ramana Maharshi wisely taught that by coming to understand what we are not (our roles), we will come to know who we really are (our soul). Alan Watts explains Brahman like this, "And it’s simply this: there is what there is and always was and always will be, which is called the Self. That, in Sanskrit, is Ātman. And the Ātman is also called Brahman. Brahman—from the root bṛh: 'to grow,' 'to expand,' 'to swell'—is actually related to our word 'breath'."

The September, the Jivamukti Yoga focus-of-the-month is all about Brahman: "Brahman is the Absolute. It is beyond everything. Brahman describes what cannot be described; it is not namable, has no form, is beyond the beyond, and is the truest, the highest, the supreme state. Brahman, as a metaphysical concept, refers to a single binding unity behind diversity in all that exists [like the Dao]. Like anything that is not visible, it cannot be defined: any definition would limit its greatness." Not to be confused with Brahma (the Hindu god of creation), Brahman is the Ultimate Reality underlying all phenomena.

Ram Dass encourages us try to see the soul, not the role in our interactions with others and also in our own selves. In seeing that someone is not their job, or their body, or their religion, or their political affiliation, or their gender, etc, etc, etc, we begin instead to see their soul--that which is eternal, unchanging and beyond all of these limiting roles and titles. As the ability to see souls instead of roles grows, so does our compassion. We begin to see our sameness, and our Oneness, and we begin to love everyone. Along with "Love everyone, serve everyone, remember God, and tell the Truth," Neem Karoli Baba (aka Maharaji) always used to say, "All One." All Brahman.

Blessings & Love

Sharada Devi