AUTHENTIC SELF

In existentialism, the extent to which a person is true to his own personality, spirit, or character, despite external pressures, is the degree to which he is authentic.  It entails the conscious self coming to terms with being in a material world and encountering external forces, pressures and influences which are very different from, and other than, itself.

In Vedanta, a person is authentic when he realizes that he is not who he thinks he is.  Most of us go to our deathbeds convinced that we are our learned self, the "I"-"me"-"mine" self.  This self is time bound; it perceives that it has a past, present, and future--the present is all it actually has--the unique particulars of which make it feel like somebody other than everybody else.

What the learned self does not see is that it IS everybody else.  Everything has one source, the Brahman, meaning that everything is the same thing, ultimately.  The personal aspect of the Brahman is called the Atman.  The Atman is our true identity, our eternal identity, our authentic self.