Shall We Take a Simple look At Brahman and Aatman?
Let us say that we simply consider that all of us at some time or the other have felt that there is something greater, much greater than us out there. The aborigine who looks up at the ominous clouds and the man in the three-piece suit looking at the television to see the rampage of wildfire in his neighborhood is consumed by one and the same feeling. This feeling comes to man in very many ways. Looking below from an airplane and seeing large expanses of land and water, looking up at the everlasting sky, instills a sense of expansiveness beyond us. It happens when no matter how hard we have worked for something, many events lead to deflect all efforts and results. We then become painfully aware of a power that exists and operates beyond. It happens when a so-called miracle of a child is born to the two bonded in love. It happens when we see the intricacies of a flower that attracts the bees. This awareness of something greater increases as one gets on with age as by then many an experience has been packed into revealing this greatness.
Now there is the other feeling, the feeling of individuality. This is a stance unmistakably unique to each person, whether he or she admits it or not. Often this feeling is disguised in the clothing of joy, sorrow, anger or affection resulting in a feeling of the limited. It remains when one is in a crowd as it does when one is all alone. This awareness, however, does not have the expansive quality of the other one. Yet it is a point that we know from which all drawings are created and a lake into which all streams flow. This is what I refer to as one’s core.
We have then the expansive feeling of the greater and the condensed feeling of the core. The god out there and the soul in here! The awareness of the greater does not mean that we have to fall into the erroneous thinking that this core is little! The greater does not exist to belittle the core. The greater exists to show that indeed since both fall into the same awareness, they are connected intimately. Awareness of this connection intensifies through observation and reflection. The fulfillment of life comes and closes in when the awareness of holding the core automatically synchronizes with the awareness that holds the greater. There are those who have made this connection without going through any scholarly philosophies. An aborigine can arrive at this as well as the monk in the monastery. It can be arrived at by the housewife balancing many a role as well as the CEO of a large company. It is the privilege of a faculty common to them all. The connection is made by using none other than the faculty of the mind that is manas or mun. If therefore you place the Sanskrit word for the core which is aatman right next to the word for the greater, which is brhman , the common part is mun. So we put aat =core on one side and place brh = greater, on the other and simply join it with mun. The greater exists to show that indeed since both fall into the same awareness, they are connected intimately. This awareness when looked at in this simple way, is it not the most natural stance?