Introducing the concept
As you discover and explore various concepts in Advaita Vedanta, it might seem like this is a complex and daunting philosophical system. There seem to be so many nuances and technicalities, each more subtle than the other. ‘How am I ever going to comprehend Advaita philosophy?’ you might wonder.
Advaita Vedanta seeks to provide uncompromisingly rational – and experientially verifiable - answers to our most profound questions. As a fully developed philosophical system, the landscape of Advaita is indeed sprawling, with soaring high peaks and colorful valleys. To students of Advaita, this landscape might sometimes seem so vast that one could get lost in it!
While it is indeed true that the philosophy is vast and ornate, providing limitless scope for discovery by spiritual seekers and scholars alike, the remarkable fact about Advaita Vedanta is that it is, at its core, a breathtakingly simple, clear, and direct philosophy. While one can certainly write volumes and volumes about various technicalities in the overall system, the ultimate teachings of Advaita Vedanta can be comprehensively summarized in just two or three words!
When we ask, ‘Who am I?’ and probe inwards, we find the Atman – the Self, the unchanging substance ‘inside’ each one of us. When we ask, ‘What is all this?’ and search for the source and ground of the world, we find Brahman – the Ultimate Reality, the unchanging substance behind the entire universe. What is the nature of the relationship between you the individual being and the Absolute that is Brahman?
In other words, what is the relationship between Atman (i.e. ‘you’) and Brahman (i.e ‘that’)? This question is firmly, majestically, and unequivocally answered in what are called the Mahavakyas or ‘the great sentences’.
There are 4 Mahavakyas, one from each of the Vedas. Let us look at each one of them. Though they are short sentences, each no more than two or three words, they capture the essence of Advaita Vedanta. To know Advaita fully well, it is sufficient to truly understand any of the Mahavakyas. All the rest of Vedantic literature, all the libraries of texts and commentaries, can be seen as expansions of - and footnotes to - the Mahavakyas. The entirety of this philosophical system, that has been developed over many millennia, can be compressed into each of these capsules. Is that not a remarkable thing?
What are these Mahavakyas? You might have heard of some or all of them: Aham Brahmasmi, Prajnanam Brahma, Ayam Atma Brahma, and Tat Tvam Asi. They are all saying the same thing in slightly different ways; they are all pointing to the exact same Truth., Let us examine each one of them.
Digging a little deeper
Mahavakya 1 - Prajnanam Brahma (Consciousness is Brahman)
The Mahavakya ‘Prajnanam Brahma’ is found in the Aitareya Upanishad of the Rg Veda. This vakya provides the concise definition of Brahman. What is Brahman? Brahman is Consciousness (prajanam), or in other words, Consciousness is Reality.
If you have not yet gone through the page on Consciousness, we request you to do that first before proceeding on this page.
Consciousness is the pure Subject or the Witness to which the entire objective world appears. Anything that can be pointed to as ‘this’ - physical objects, thoughts, concepts - is an appearance to the Subject that is Consciousness.
Now ask the following question - can there be more than one Consciousness?
If you say yes, that would mean that there are differences or separations within Consciousness; it would mean that there are distinctions between each individual consciousness. But distinctions, separations, quantities, etc. are all objective properties. Any objective property implies a Subject that ‘looks’ at it. It does not make any sense to talk of differences or quantities in the Subject itself. [Consciousness is the singular to which there is no plural]. If this is hard for you to fully comprehend now, do not worry. It will become clearer as your study of Vedanta continues. Just take it for now that there is only one non-dual Consciousness.
Let us now ask an even more subtle question. Are all of the objects that appear to this one Consciousness any different than Consciousness itself? Or to put it more directly - Are there any objects present outside Consciousness?
This might seem like a strange question. After all, are there not so many objects that exist even if we are not looking at them? But if you say ‘Yes, of course, there are objects that are outside Consciousness!,’ ask yourself this further question - how are these objects appearing to Consciousness? How is it that these objects are interacting with Consciousness? Where is the point of interaction between Subject and Object?
Reflect on this. Take any object that you are aware of, look at it closely, note the object’s appearance to you - its shape, color, size, all its properties as they appear to you - and ask ‘Which part of this appearance is outside of Consciousness?’ Whatever you are able to point at is within Consciousness, within your awareness. ‘I am only able to see the surface of the object,’ you might say, ‘but there is a depth to it that I am not directly aware of, but I know to be true.’ In response to that, reflect on this - you can only know what you are aware of; if you are not aware of the depth, if the depth is not appearing to you in any way, how can you say anything about it? Another way to think about this will be that the concept of ‘depth’ is also an appearance to your awareness - you might not be able to ‘see’ the depth, but the very fact that you are conceiving of a ‘hidden’ depth to the object indicates that ‘depth’ is also within within your awareness - in other words, the concept of depth is also ‘inside’ Consciousness and not ‘outside’.
A major part of the difficulty in coming to terms with the all-pervasive nature of Consciousness is that we confuse our awareness of the world - or, loosely speaking, our minds - for pure Consciousness. In Vedanta - as in all schools of Indian philosophy - there is a very clear difference between mind (Antahkarana) and Consciousness. Go through our page on Antahkarana (Inner Instrument) for a better understanding of this. There are certainly many things that we as conscious beings with limited minds do not know or are not aware of; but anything that can possibly be conceived of, spoken of, or pointed to - anything that can possibly be known - is within the pure non-dual Consciousness.
Again, if you are finding this very hard to understand, do not worry. Whenever you get some time, pick an object in front of you and examine your experience of it. If you switch off the Consciousness that is looking at it, what will happen to the object - does it make any sense to speak of the object independent of Consciousness? Use your common everyday experiences to reflect on the nature of Consciousness, and stay with the inquiry - the concepts on this page will become strikingly clear.
What you will realize is that Consciousness pervades everything, and Consciousness is everything you see, through and through; Consciousness is the material out of which the World is made. Like a rasagulla soaked in sugar syrup, the world is soaked in Consciousness.
Very simply, In reality there is only the non-dual Consciousness; nothing else exists. Consciousness is Reality. The world that we perceive, including our own individual selves, is an appearance of this Consciousness to itself (see Maya).
Revisit the page on Chit (Consciousness). There you inquired ‘Who am I?’ and found the answer to be ‘I am Consciousness’. You are Consciousness and Consciousness is the all-pervasive Reality - do you see the stunning implications of this? The implication is directly addressed in the second Mahavakya.
Mahavakya 2 - Aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahman)
The Mahavakya Aham Brahmasmi comes in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad of the Yajur Veda.
We can doubt everything in the world but we cannot doubt our own existence. Even if we are dreaming right now, or even if we are being tricked into perceiving a ‘fake’ world, the fact that there is an ‘I’ that is being tricked cannot be doubted.
Self-existence is the only indisputable knowledge we have, it is the firm and unshakeable ground on which we can build all our other knowledge.
When we then examined the nature of this self (read our pages on Chit and Atman), we found it to be Pure Consciousness.
And when we, just now, examined the nature of this Consciousness, we found it to be Reality or Existence itself; we found that Consciousness alone exists, and the world is an appearance of Consciousness to itself.
I am Consciousness and Consciousness is Brahman. Which means? Yes, I am Brahman!
In our page on Brahman, we had described it as the Highest Knowledge and the final destination of the spiritual quest. We go out seeking Brahman, we struggle and we struggle, we read and inquire, we reflect and we meditate, and finally we realize that the Reality we were searching for was within us all along. The searcher itself is what is being searched. The Self that is seeking itself is that which is being sought after.
Brahman is not anything ‘out there’ - it is you; not in a poetic or metaphorical sense but as a very simple statement of the plain fact - You are Brahman. You are the indestructible Reality that existed before the manifestation of the World, that is watching on as the drama of the World is now playing out, and that will remain untouched when the World dissolves back into its source.
Everything that you see, everything that you consider to be separate from you, is in reality nothing but you - it is your Self that is manifesting as this entire world!
‘Atmaiva Sarvam!’ Sri Sankaracharya writes repeatedly[1]. Reflect on this, meditate on this.
Mahavakya 3 - Ayam Atma Brahma (This Atman is Brahman)
The Mahavakya Ayam Atma Brahma is found in the Mandukya Upanishad of the Atharva Veda. Note that the sequence in which we have presented the Mahavakyas are not important - there are no ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ Mahavakyas - each one of them takes us directly to the Truth.
In our page on Atman, we inquired into the nature of the Self, or the reality that we perceive as this constant sense of ‘I’. We found the self to be Atman, which is nothing but Consciousness. If we examine the nature of Consciousness (as we have done in the Prajnama Brahma section above), we find it to be Existence or Reality itself. The seeker can point to themself and say ‘This very Self, which is of the nature of pure Consciousness, is Brahman!’
As you can now begin to see, this is simply another way of pointing to the same ultimate teaching that the first two Mahavakyas are pointing to. When we get the teaching ‘Aham Brahmasmi,’ we might incorrectly take the ‘Aham’ or ‘I’ to be our body-mind. The Mahavakya Ayam Atma Brahma is a good corrective to this, guiding us to remember that the reality pointed to by ‘Aham’ is the Atman.
Mahavakya 4 - Tat Tvam Asi (That Thou Art)
Tat Tvam Asi comes in the Chandogya Upanishad of the Sama Veda. It means ‘That thou art’ or ‘You are That’. If the first three Mahavakyas are stated from the point of view of the seeker, this fourth Mahavakya is from the point of view of the teacher or Guru. It is the final teaching that the Guru will impart to the qualified student.
Those seeking the ultimate Knowledge must develop and nurture the Sadhana Chatustaya or the fourfold-qualifications of the spiritual aspirant (see Shraddha). This requires dedication, effort, and patience. When such a qualified student hears the Mahavakya Tat Tvam Asi from their Guru, clarity emerges and they realize, ‘I am Brahman!’
‘Tat’ (‘That’) here refers to the Ultimate Reality or Brahman. ‘Tvam’ (‘You’) refers to the jiva or the individual being. Tat Tvam Asi indicates the absolute identity between the jiva and Brahman. We have seen, in our elaborations of the other Mahavakyas, that the jiva and Brahman are both in reality Pure Consciousness, and thus are one and the same. In reality there is only Brahman; both ‘Tvam’ and ‘Tat’ are unreal masks that we put on Brahman.
Tying the threads together
You would have found by now that all the Mahavakyas follow the same structure. On the one side is the divine Brahman or Ultimate Reality - ‘That’, the final destination of the spiritual and philosophical quest. On the other side is you the seeker - ‘Tvam’ or ‘I’. The Mahavakyas place a ‘=’ between these two sides.
The Mahavakyas carry the final teaching of Advaita Vedanta, in which the seeker and the sought are merged into one, in which the individual and the universal are seen to be unreal projections on the one Existence. The reality in your inmost self and the reality behind the entirety of existence is one and the same.