Brahm

Brahm (also written as Brahman) is the fundamental concept (or an axiom) in all these discussions. Brahm is what this universe is made of. Everything is made of Brahm, or even better, everything is Brahm. Brahm itself has no form, it does not change, and is eternal. This is a different term from Brahma, one of the three major Gods in Hinduism.

A very large part of Vedantic texts, including Bhagwat Gita, is full of descriptions of Brahm in several forms. It has been described as divine consciousness, bliss, omnipresent, omniscient, permanent, ultimate truth etc.

The closest analogy I can give is electrons, protons etc which are present in all that we see around, and are same in everything. However, Brahm is probably something more subtle since even electrons and protons are not omnipresent. I am not sure if there is a known physics concept that resembles the described properties of Brahm closely, but energy might be close, and there may be something even closer in quantum physics that I really am not qualified enough to comment upon. But the fact that people like Schrodinger held Vedanta in high regard gives me hope that modern physics may be able to describe Brahm some day. In any case, if you keep recursively dividing the smallest available particles into its constituents, you should eventually end up with something of which everything else is made of. Let's call that Brahm for now, until science progresses enough to give a clearer picture.


Other terms like soul, Atma, Parmatma etc also mean Brahm, but used in different contexts. Even the term God, wherever used, also refers to Brahm only, and not to a superhuman sitting somewhere up in the sky doing magical things.