SAT

(Sanskrit: the existent), in Vedic and early Hindu thought, a significant notion of the nature of ultimate reality. While sat originally described the divine as manifest in the perceptible world and thus subordinated to the unmanifest existent (asat), in the Ch andogya Upanisad (chapter 6), the view was expressed that the existent existed originally, without a prior stage of the unmanifest existent. This ties in with the belief expressed earlier in the Rigveda (10:122) that in the beginning neither sat nor asat existed, which is to say that the divine reigned in totally distinctionless purity. Henceforth sat has remained one of the essential features of the supreme. An example is the Advaita (Nondualist) characterization of the supreme being, Brahma, as saccidananda: existence (sat), consciousness (cit), and bliss (ananda).