Brahman

The concept of Brahman develops across the Vedic corpus into the Upanishads and later Vedantic schools. Early Vedic material links a burgeoning notion of a sacred power present in sound, words and ritual to what later is named Brahman; scholarly treatments (e.g., Gavin Flood cited in sources) trace this historical movement from ritual efficacy to a metaphysical principle. In the Upanishads and Vedanta Brahman is articulated as the primordial, unchanging reality that underlies all phenomena and is the goal of liberative knowledge. Textual traditions such as advaita cite works like the Avadhuta Gita as clear expositions of non-dual identification of the individual Self (Atman) with Brahman.

Sources do not provide a fixed physical appearance for Brahman. In non-dual (nirguṇa) accounts Brahman is described as attributeless, ineffable and beyond sensory form; in saguṇa accounts Brahman may be conceived with attributes or experienced as an immanent divine presence (sometimes related to Ishvara) for devotional practice. Any visualized personhood (for example the creator deity Brahmā) is lexically and conceptually distinct from Brahman in the cited materials.

Described as the material, efficient, formal and final cause of the universe, Brahman's 'activity' is cosmological rather than agentive: it creates, sustains and ultimately withdraws the universe within itself. As the ground of being it pervades and underlies all phenomena. In Advaita Vedanta Brahman is identified with Atman (the true Self), and realization of that identity effects liberation; other schools treat Brahman and the individual self as distinct. The literature frames Brahman's function in metaphysical and soteriological terms rather than as a mythic actor performing discrete deeds.