Brahman
Also known as: The Absolute, Ultimate Reality
Sanskrit: brahman, from the root brih, meaning to grow, expand, or become vast.
Brahman is the Advaita Vedanta term for the single, unchanging, limitless reality underlying and pervading all existence. It is described as without form and without a second, the ground of being from which the entire universe of names and forms appears, and is held to be identical with the individual self, Atman.
Advaita Vedanta distinguishes Nirguna Brahman, the absolute beyond all qualities and description, from Saguna Brahman, the same reality appearing with qualities, as a personal God or as the manifest universe. The tradition's central teaching is that Brahman and Atman are not two separate realities but one, summarized in the Upanishadic phrase Tat Tvam Asi, meaning That thou art.
Classical Vedanta describes Brahman with the phrase Sat-Chit-Ananda, existence, consciousness and bliss, though these function as pointers rather than literal attributes, since Brahman is also described as beyond all qualities and categories entirely. A common misreading treats Brahman as a distant, impersonal cosmic force separate from ordinary life; Advaita's central claim runs closer to the opposite, that Brahman is the one reality already present as this very moment, not an object to be reached somewhere else.
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Related Terms
Nonduality
Nonduality (or non-duality) is the direct recognition that awareness and its contents, such as thoughts, sensations, and the sense of being a separate self, are not two separate things but a single, seamless reality. It is a description of direct experience, central to Advaita Vedanta and related contemplative traditions.
Maya
Maya is the Advaita Vedanta concept describing the appearance of a separate, changing world superimposed on the one unchanging reality of Brahman. Often translated as illusion, it more precisely means a veiling and projecting power that makes the one appear as many, not that the world itself is nonexistent.
Atman
Atman is the Sanskrit term for the true Self, the innermost witnessing awareness that Advaita Vedanta holds to be identical with Brahman, the universal reality. It is distinguished from the ego or personality, which is considered a changing, constructed sense of I rather than the unchanging awareness in which all experience appears.