Brahman

 

  

  Supreme Reality

According to Adi Shankara, God, the Supreme Cosmic Spirit or Brahman is the One, the whole and the only reality (Paramarthika Satyam). Other than Brahman, everything else, including the universe, material objects and individuals, are false. Brahman is at best described as that infinite, omnipresent, omnipotent, incorporeal, impersonal, transcendent reality that is the divine ground of all Being. Brahman is often described as neti neti meaning "not this, not this" because Brahman cannot be correctly described as this or that. In fact, Brahman can never be known as an object of experience because it is the very subject that experiences everything. 'It' (grammatically neutral, but exceptionally treated as masculine) is the origin of this and that, the origin of forces, substances, all of existence, the undefined, the basis of all, unborn, the essential truth, unchanging, eternal, the absolute. How can it be properly described as something in the material world when itself is the basis of reality? Brahman is also beyond the senses, it would be akin a blind man trying to correctly describe color. It, though not necessarily a form of physical matter, is the substrate of the material world, which in turn is its illusory transformation. Brahman is not the effect of the world, but its very cause. Brahman is said to be the purest knowledge itself, and is illuminant like a source of infinite light.