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The Upanishads

Time is not denied but downgraded: the temporal world is real for practical purposes, but Brahman is timeless and the Self is identical with Brahman, so the temporal self is in some sense not the real self. Cyclical rebirth (saṃsāra) is presupposed throughout — the Brihadaranyaka discusses karma and rebirth in terms that already assume the cycle ("As one acts, as one behaves, so does one become," BU 4.4.5). The goal is not extension within time but release from temporal succession.

The Upanishads

Space is treated as an emergent appearance within Brahman, not as a substantival container. The famous "five sheaths" (Taittiriya 2) place the body, vital-air, and mind sheaths within space, but the bliss-sheath and Self are not spatial at all. "He is not within, he is not without" (BU 3.9.26) — the Self does not have a place.

The Upanishads

Matter is real at the level of vyāvahārika (practical) truth but derivative at the level of pāramārthika (ultimate) truth. The famous clay-and-pots passage in Chandogya 6.1 — "by knowing one lump of clay, all that is made of clay becomes known" — establishes that material forms are modifications of a single substrate, not independent existents. This is the foundational text for the Advaita treatment of matter as māyā.

The Upanishads

The Upanishadic observer is the philosophical centrepiece. The empirical self (jīva) is plural, embodied, and active within saṃsāra; but the true Self (Ātman) is one, disembodied, passive (the "non-acting witness," BU 4.3.15), and identical with Brahman. Knowledge of this identity is liberating — knowledge here is *transformative*, not propositional. "Verily, the Self is to be seen, to be heard, to be reflected on, to be meditated upon" (BU 2.4.5). The Observer Number is Singular at the level the Upanishads consider real.

The Upanishads

Prāṇa (vital breath / energy) is treated as a derivative manifestation of Brahman — the Kausītaki Upanishad equates prāṇa with the Self in some passages, while the Chandogya treats it as one among several psycho-physical functions ranked under speech (CU 5.1). Energy is reversible: it cycles through living beings and is reabsorbed at the cosmic dissolution (pralaya).

The Upanishads

What is "conserved" across rebirths is karmic and gnostic — not discrete bits, but the moral-cognitive deposit that determines the next life. The Bridhadāraṇyaka's "As one acts, as one behaves, so does one become" (BU 4.4.5) is the canonical statement of personal-information conservation. At the cosmic level, Brahman is full and undiminished — "That is full; this is full; the full comes out of the full; taking the full from the full, the full itself remains" (Isha Upanishad, invocation).