Brahman

In its first appearances in the Rg Veda,
the earliest text in the sacred literature
known as the Vedas, the term Brahman
both denotes the power inherent in, and
gives potency to, the sacred word. In the
Brahmana literature, one of the later
strands in the Vedas, brahman was the
name for one of the four types of priests
who officiated at a sacrifice (the others
being hotr, udgatr, and adhvaryum). In
the Upanishads and afterward,
Brahman is the generally accepted term
for the highest reality in the universe,
which is both the material cause and the
final cause of all that exists. In the worldview of the Upanishads, the speculative
and most recent texts in the Vedas,
Brahman is the single binding unity
behind the world’s apparent diversity.
These texts also affirm Brahman’s identity with atman, the individual soul, and
thus the identity of the essence of
macrocosm and microcosm. As
described in many of the Upanishads
and later systematized by the philosopher Shankaracharya (9th c.), the ultimate form of Brahman is without
qualities (nirguna), formless, nameless,
indefinable, and grammatically a neuter
122
Brahma Muhurta
After death, a liberated person’s soul is believed to escape through an opening in the skull
called the brahmarandhra. This is thought to correspond to the fontanel,
an opening in an infant’s skull (right) that closes in adulthood (left).
noun. In contrast, particular deities are
seen as lower, provisional, qualified
(saguna) forms of Brahman. This understanding was modified by the influence
of later devotional trends, in which ideas
of the highest Brahman became identified with a particular deity, who was
seen as the ultimate source of all things.