Ātman · the inmost self

The self — not the personality, not the memories, not the body, but the awareness in which all of those appear. And the Upaniṣadic claim about it is the most extreme sentence in the history of religion: it is not like Brahman, not from Brahman. It is Brahman. Tat tvam asi.

The door's title and its whole argument. And the sharpest three-way disagreement on the bench: ☸ Buddhism says there is no such self at all; ॐ says it is the absolute; and the Kabbalah says it is real, it is from God, and it is not God — a lamp lit from the fire is not the fire.