The
name means "the end or scope of the Veda;" and if the Upanishads were
the Veda, instead of treatises tacked on to it, the name would be
correct; for the Vedanta, like the Upanishads, inculcates pantheism.

The form which this philosophy ultimately assumed is well represented in
the treatise called the Vedanta Sara, or essence of the Vedanta. A few
extracts will suffice to exhibit its character. "The unity of the soul
and God--this is the scope of all Vedanta treatises." We have frequent
references made to the "great saying," _Tat twam_--that is, That art
thou, or Thou art God; and _Aham Brahma_, that is, I am God. Again it is
said, "The whole universe is God." God is "existence (or more exactly an
existent thing[15]), knowledge, and joy." Knowledge, not a knower; joy,
not one who rejoices.

[Sidenote: It teaches absolute idealism.]
Every thing else has only a seeming existence, which is in consequence
of ignorance (or illusion). Ignorance makes the soul think itself
different from God; and it also "projects" the appearance of an external
world.

"He who knows God becomes God." "When He, the first and last, is
discerned, one's own acts are annihilated."

Meditation, without distinction of subject and object, is the highest
form of thought. It is a high attainment to say, "I am God;" but the
consummation is when thought exists without an object.

There are four states of the soul--waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep,
and the "fourth state," or pure intelligence. The working-man is in
dense ignorance; in sleep he is freed from part of this ignorance; in
dreamless sleep he is freed from still more; but the consummation is
when he attains something beyond this, which it seems cannot be
explained, and is therefore called the fourth state.

[Sidenote: Doctrine of "the Self."
Inconsistent statements.]
The name, which in later writings is most frequently given to the "one
without a second,"[16] is Atman, which properly means self. Much is said
of the way in which the self in each man is to recover, or discover, its
unity with the supreme or real self. For as the one sun shining in the
heavens is reflected, often in distorted images, in multitudes of
vessels filled with water, so the one self is present in all human
minds.[17] There is not--perhaps there could not be--consistency in the
statements of the relation of the seeming to the real. In most of the
older books a practical or conventional existence is admitted of