Chapter 2

Atman – The Self (The Spirit)

Words of Sri Aurobindo

Brahman is, subjectively, Atman, the Self or immutable existence of all that is in the universe.

Words of Sri Aurobindo

… the Brahman … extends itself here in space and time and fills its extension. We feel our identity with it and we realise that it is our true Self and the true Self of everything in the universe and of the universe both in its sum and in its entirety. We call it then the Atman, a word which originally meant true Being or true Substance.

Words of Sri Aurobindo

The Atman is the Self or Spirit that remains above, pure and stainless, unaffected by the stains of life, by desire and ego and ignorance. It is realised as the true being of the individual, but also more widely as the same being in all and as the Self of the cosmos; it has also a self-existence above the individual and cosmos and it is then called the Paramatma, the supreme Divine Being.

Words of Sri Aurobindo

The Self is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once individual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is the straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality, a Nature-transcendence. At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which it is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but constituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings in Nature.