Dear Immortal Self,
Sa Prem Pranams. Loving Greetings. Please do not be surprised to be addressed as the Immortal Self. This is your soul identity or spiritual identity. The Soul or the Spirit never dies. It transmigrates to a new body when the old body becomes unusable. This is the absolute truth.
Prakriti or Mother Nature
The other aspect of you, the material identity and the material life or the creation is the play of the mind, the Mother Nature or Prakriti. So, it necessarily means that the immortal spirit (soul), the real you, resides in the disease and death prone body, sense organs, mind intellect combination, the material lower you.
Relativity of Avidya or Maya
Due to wrong and negative information depending on your short term and long term and ultra long term memory, ignorance of spiritual you happen. This is called Relativity of Avidya or Maya. So, Yoga and Spiritual practice means that you have to go above Maya (the Ego) and be free from Ignorance or Avidya. This is not possible if you do not have a spiritual Guru or Master on whom you have unconditional faith, harmony and obedience.
Guru and Gurukula
You have to follow Yama and Niyama too. With these conditions, the student lives in the Gurus residential school (Gurukula) at least for a year or two. Then your concentration of mind and power of understanding comes and develops. Then the Master or Guru recommends you to sit near him and in a pleasant, relaxed, and pure atmosphere (both inner and outer), passes on to you the highest knowledge (Vignyanam) from the spiritual scriptures and from his own spiritual experiences. Thus the disciple develops Shreya or spiritual lifestyle, the power to meditate deeply and enter into Yoga Samadhi. In due time the Master declares him a teacher and to enter family life or monastic life, depending on the basic personalities and preferences of the student. These personalized teachings about God and his creations are known as the Upanishads. This is pure spiritual knowledge of God, beyond the relativity of mind, intellect, and ego or Maya or Avidya.
TAT TWAM ASI and OM TAT SAT is the revelation about the real, absolute and immortal you.
With Love and Blessings to you. Humbly,
Paramahansa Atmananda ji