Atman (ātman)

Atman is the self, understood not as personality or body but as the unchanging awareness that underlies both. The Bhagavad Gita's answer to Arjuna's despair begins here: weapons do not cut it, fire does not burn it, and the one who thinks it kills or is killed has understood neither. The Mahabharata returns to the atman throughout its teaching sections, and the Upanishadic conversation between Uddalaka and Shvetaketu, ending in the formula that thou art, is its clearest statement of the self's identity with the ground of everything.