What I understand by “Atman” is basically the Paramatman or the dehin (the “one in the body”):
“The dehin […] witnesses whatever takes place physically within the range of the senses and sensations of a particular individual’s body. It also witnesses the mental world of that individual, its [i.e., the individual’s] thoughts or emotions. The apparent self-consciousness of the individual is in fact the dehin’s consciousness of the individual. But the dehin only witnesses. It cannot make the individual act, think, or feel in any one way rather than another. From its point of view, all actual events, thoughts and feelings take care of themselves, as it were. They follow their own laws: they are causally related to each other but not to dehin. But it may be misleading to talk here of dehin’s ‘point of view’, since dehin has no point of view of its own: at any particular time it has the point of view of a particular individual. It is proposed as a hypothetical subject only in order to modify the simple, single-bodied subject identity of the individual.” (Simon Brodbeck, Introduction to the Mascaró translation of the Bhagavad Gita.)
The self-valuing logic of being led me (back) to this view. Seeing myself as a self-valuing. Note that I’ve always associated the dehin with Zarathustra’s concept of the “Self”:
“Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage–it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body.
There is more sagacity in thy body than in thy best wisdom. And who then knoweth why thy body requireth just thy best wisdom?
Thy Self laugheth at thine ego, and its proud prancings. ‘What are these prancings and flights of thought unto me?’ it saith to itself. ‘A by-way to my purpose. I am the leading-string of the ego, and the prompter of its notions.’
The Self saith unto the ego: ‘Feel pain!’ And thereupon it suffereth, and thinketh how it may put an end thereto–and for that very purpose it is meant to think.
The Self saith unto the ego: 'Feel pleasure!” Thereupon it rejoiceth, and thinketh how it may ofttimes rejoice–and for that very purpose it is meant to think.
[…]
The creating Self created for itself esteeming and despising, it created for itself joy and woe. The creating body created for itself spirit, as a hand to its will." (Nietzsche, Zarathustra, “The Despisers of the Body”, Common trans.)
Now you will see there’s a difference between these two conceptions. The dehin’s perception is immaculate perception: it only witnesses. The Self’s perception is will to power: it prompts the ego with its notions. The self-valuing logic of being, though it is an elaboration of the doctrine of the will to power, seems to make the immaculate view possible again, to lack–as I put it before my recently attained understanding of that logic–the insistence on its being itself a valuation. This is related to the fact that eternal recurrence is not an epistemo-logical necessity for it.
I foresee my near future as contrasting (the Asian form of) Buddhism with the European form of Buddhism, that is, with Nietzsche’s teaching. (It may be more accurate to say “Eastern” and “Western form”, since Buddhism has certainly conquered quite a bit of (Western) North America, and “East” and “West” are relative.)
The key insight may be that the will is itself a representation (Vorstellung). The will to power is not a being (Sein), but a pathos (Nietzsche, Will to Power 635). Must one, in order not to be a nihilist, insist on the being of the will to power, on Vorstellen’s being a Wollen (willing, volition–see http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?p=2577337#p2577337)? What drives me to the truth is my will, but the truth appears to be that there’s only bundles of impressions, to speak with Hume:
“[S]cience [in the literal sense of “knowledge”] is the simple realization that whatever is experienced–a self, a world, the law of contradiction, a god or anything else–is nothing apart from its being experienced. When students complain of ‘identity crises’, I tell them not to worry, since neither they nor anyone else has an identity about which to have a crisis! For science, genuine knowledge of reality, reveals a world of nothing but empty experiences, impressions as Hume called them.” (Harry Neumann, Liberalism, “Politics or Nothing!”)
As Neumann says elsewhere in the same book, his mock-consolation is precisely the reason behind identity crises… My only problem with Neumann, or my essential problem or the essence of my problem with him, was this:
“[H]ow anyone can experience nihilism as pleasurable is beyond me!” (op.cit., “Reply to Professor Shadia Drury”.)
Now since I “crossed the Abyss” of self-valuing, I know how nihilism can be “not unpleasant” (to use Socrates’ evaluation of refuting others). See my signature quote: