The Upanishads

Throughout the Upanishads, the texts push forward the concept that God, Brahman, or the Spirit simultaneously exists within and beyond the universe and everything in it. One passage conveying this view says, “In space he is the sun, and he is the wind and the sky; at the altar he is the priest, and the Soma wine in the jar. He dwells in men and in gods, in righteousness and in the vast heavens” (63). The Upanishads thus also seek to explain how this ultimate reality dwells within the individual.

In the text, Brahman is sometimes personified as an entity that can be interacted with and, at least in Juan Mascaró’s translation, is gendered as “he.” However, Brahman is not a god or God in the basic monotheistic sense, as in Judaism, Islam, or Christianity. It is perhaps best understood as a force that permeates all reality and all life, rather than an entity that exists separately from the universe and from living beings: “All this universe is in truth Brahman” (114). This is what the authors of the Upanishads mean when they stress unity and state “there is no duality” (136).