Student: What is the Atman?

Teacher: What you see in your eyes is the Atman. What you see in the reflection is the Atman.

Student: What is reflected anywhere, which is nothing but this body, is the Atman, then the Atman would be affected by every kind of defect to which the body is subject. So there would be a defective Atman. This body is subject to death. This Atman cannot then be called immortal. When this body goes, the Atman also will go, if the body is the Atman. If I am well-dressed, the Atman is also well-dressed. If the body is blind, the Atman is blind. If the body is crippled, the Atman also is crippled. If the body is diseased, the Atman would have disease. There is something wrong with my understanding.

Teacher: That which you see in the state of dream is the Atman.

Student: One feels as if one is chased or driven away or being killed even in dream. One feels sorrow and grief and passes through unpleasant experiences in dream also. One cries, weeps and sobs when one has painful experiences in dream also. The dreaming person can be sorry, can be affected in a serious manner like the waking one and he has even the experience of destruction etc. There is something wrong with my understanding.

Teacher: He who is in the deep sleep state, that is the Atman.

Student: It is as if it is not there at all! It is a zero, an annihilation, a negation of all things! This Atman is a darkness which knows neither its own self nor others. What kind of thing is this sleep? Neither it knows that it is, nor does it know that anything else is. It is like complete annihilation, as it were. How could self-annihilation be the Atman? There is something wrong with my understanding.

Teacher: I was just making you ready to hear the truth. Atman is not an individual thing. It is due to which every experience is possible, yet it itself does not experience anything – just watches with detachment. It is not personality consciousness like waking state; it is also not non-consciousness like deep sleep state. It is awareness without individuality. It is just awareness without yours or mine. When you look at my eyes or to anybody’s eyes, you can see it. It is not like your Atman but you yourself are Atman, or it is not like your awareness but you yourself are awareness. You are taking yourself to be the body and are asking what is Atman, but actually you are Atman who has forgotten its true nature and is wrongly taking it to be the body. The Atman is bodiless just like space which has no body but is everywhere.

Derived from Chhandogya Upanishad by Swami Krishnananda