The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (995 page)

yakas gave rise to the belief that there is an underlying self or soul (
tman
) which persists through the process of living and dying, and which subsists through all the changing appearances of a body. By the time of the Upani
ads, this had become a belief that Brahman, the unproduced Producer of all that is, pervades the fleeting appearances of this or any other universe as
tman, as the underlying guarantor of appearance, but not in any way identical with it. While
tman is entangled in desire for the world, it continues to be reborn (
sa
s
ra
), at many different levels of appearance, in heavens and hells, as animals or as humans: the outcome, for better or for worse, is governed by a natural moral law of
karma
, as inexorable as that of gravity. To be born as a human is a rare opportunity to advance toward mok
a, release from the round of rebirth.
The nature of that attainment is variously described. At the philosophical end,
advaita
envisages a reunion of undifferentiated reality.
Theism, however, dominates Indian religion. Each person (or often region or village) is likely to have a particular focus of devotion (
i
adevat
), but these will usually complement, not supplant the major deities. The sense of God as Lord (
bhagav
n
) is usually expressed as
vara
; but God may become manifest in many different forms, hence the (initially bewildering) proliferation of gods and goddesses from the Vedic period onward. The manifestation of these on earth (especially of