The teaching about mahatmas is one the most important in the whole range of theosophical study. The reason for this lies in the fact that to attain the state of mahatmaship is the object of human evolution and its culmination. Understanding something of what a mahatma is will show what we are going to be in the future ourselves. For the aim of man's evolution is to transform the ordinary human being into a perfected spiritual man, a mahatma. The word is a combination of two Sanskrit words: maha, "great;" and atman, "soul." Thus the word mahatma means literally "a great soul."