Advaita Vedānta teaches that at the deepest level of reality there is only one, non-dual truth: Brahman, the absolute, unchanging reality. The individual self, or Ātman, is not ultimately separate from this absolute; rather, Ātman and Brahman are identical. What appears as a world of many things, many beings, and shifting experiences is not denied at the everyday level, but is understood as lacking independent ultimate reality. This apparent multiplicity is described as māyā, an appearance or illusion grounded in ignorance (avidyā) about the true nature of the Self.

Because of this ignorance, consciousness seems fragmented into countless individual centers of experience, each feeling cut off from the whole. The sense of being a separate jīva, bound by birth and death, pleasure and pain, arises from this fundamental misapprehension. Advaita Vedānta holds that liberation, or mokṣa, does not consist in going somewhere else or becoming something new, but in seeing clearly what has always been the case. Through direct knowledge (jñāna) the false identification with limitation falls away, and it is recognized that one’s true Self has never been other than Brahman.

This realization is often encapsulated in the great declarations of the Upaniṣads, such as “ahaṁ brahmāsmi” and “tat tvam asi,” which affirm the unity of individual consciousness with the absolute. When this insight dawns, the play of multiplicity is still perceived, yet it is no longer taken as ultimately dividing reality into separate parts. The world is then understood as an appearance grounded in the one, undivided consciousness that is Brahman. In this vision, the central teaching of Advaita Vedānta is not merely a doctrine, but a transformative recognition that the seeker and the sought have always been one and the same.