Ayam Atma Brahma — This Self Is Brahman
The Mahavakya 'Ayam Atma Brahma' from the Mandukya Upanishad declares that this very Atman — the awareness present right now — is identical with Brahman, the ultimate reality.
Ayam Atma Brahma ('This Atman is Brahman' — Mandukya Upanishad 2) is one of the four Mahavakyas, assigned to the Atharva Veda. Unlike Aham Brahmasmi (which is a first-person declaration) and Tat Tvam Asi (which is a second-person teaching), Ayam Atma Brahma is a third-person pointing: 'This (Ayam) — not some distant, transcendent reality, but THIS very awareness present right now — is Brahman.' The word 'Ayam' (this, here, now) is crucial: Brahman is not found somewhere else, in some other state, after some future attainment. It is the very awareness you are exercising right now as you read this sentence. The Mandukya context — which identifies AUM with the four states of consciousness — positions Turiya (pure awareness, the silence after AUM) as what Ayam refers to: the awareness that is already present, already infinite, already Brahman.
Ayam Atma Brahma — This Self is Brahman.
Philosopher Edmund Husserl's phenomenological reduction — the 'bracketing' of all assumptions about the external world to return to pure consciousness itself — is a methodological parallel to the Mandukya's 'Ayam Atma Brahma': both point to the already-present awareness as the irreducible ground from which all investigation must begin.
Mandukya Upanishad
Written about in
- What Advaita Vedanta says about the self
This self is Brahman points at the awareness present while you read the sentence. The wording is careful: this, not somewhere else and not later.