In this episode of “5 Minutes,” Dr. Robert Svoboda explores Atman and its traditional meaning as the soul and connection with Supreme Reality.

Atman is a Sanskrit word that comes from the root atman, which means air or prana. It means breathing, and it is therefore closely related to the concept of prana. In the context of living beings and the five-element world in which we exist, we can understand that every living being experiences prana as the Supreme Soul, because this is how Atman has come to be understood in Sanskrit.

It means the soul, that which is beyond everything and more subtle than everything else. For many thousands of years, people have considered the difference between the jivatman, the individual embodied soul, and the paramatman, the Supreme Soul. There are many different opinions about whether individual souls are truly separate, whether they are expressions of one reality, whether they are temporary manifestations, or whether they are only figurative. But those questions do not need to concern us at this moment.

What we need to understand is that as embodied beings, we contain within ourselves a fragment of that Supreme Reality. This is why we are able to reflect that Supreme Reality. Whatever the ultimate mechanism may be, what matters is that we recognize that we are simultaneously connected with the Supreme Reality and also exist as individuals.

The immediate reality is that we have both the experience of being an individual and the connection to the Supreme Reality. Much of spirituality for human beings is the process of aligning our individual soul with that Supreme Soul and gradually becoming more open to it, allowing it to be reflected through us, embodied through us, and expressed to other jivatmas who may not yet be as open or aligned with that reality.

In one of the Upanishads, there is the phrase atma kridaha, atma ratihi, atma maithunam. Here, atma is another form of Atman because of the grammatical ending.

Atma kridaha refers to krida, which means play, but in this context it means a kind of loving play with the Supreme Atman. Spirituality should contain a certain amount of joy, attraction, and loving relationship with the Supreme Reality.

Atma ratihi goes further. Rati suggests a deeper form of love and a more intimate relationship with the Supreme Reality.

Then there is atma maithunam, which represents union and complete connection with that Supreme Reality.

From one perspective, this is what spirituality truly is: the union, the joining, and the marriage of the individual soul with the Supreme Soul.