tain that the path to final release is, in
accordance with the colour of the arteries, either white or blue, &c.;
but that is false, for the paths through the arteries lead at the best
to the world of Brahman, which itself forms part of the sa/m/sara); that
path (i.e. the only path to release, viz. the path of true knowledge) is
found by Brahman, i.e. by such Brahma/n/as as through true knowledge
have become like Brahman,' &c.

A significant instance in truth of the straits to which thorough-going
systematisers of the Upanishads see themselves reduced occasionally!

But we return to the point which just now chiefly interests us. Whether
/S/a@nkara's interpretation of the chapter, and especially of section 6,
be right or wrong, so much is certain that we are not entitled to view
all those texts which speak of the soul going to the world of Brahman as
belonging to the so-called lower knowledge, because a few other passages
declare that the sage does not go to Brahman. The text which declares
the sage free from desires to become one with Brahman could not, without
due discrimination, be used to define and limit the meaning of other
passages met with in the same Upanishad even--for as we have remarked
above the B/ri/hadara/n/yaka contains pieces manifestly belonging to
different stages of development;--much less does it entitle us to put
arbitrary constructions on passages forming part of other Upanishads.
Historically the disagreement of the various accounts is easy to
understand. The older notion was that the soul of the wise man proceeds
along the path of the gods to Brahman's abode. A later--and, if we like,
more philosophic--conception is that, as Brahman already is a man's
Self, there is no need of any motion on man's part to reach Brahman. We
may even apply to those two views the terms apara and para--lower and
higher--knowledge. But we must not allow any commentator to induce us to
believe that what he from his advanced standpoint looks upon as an
inferior kind of cognition, was viewed in the same light by the authors
of the Upanishads.

We turn to another Upanishad text likewise touching upon the point
considered in what precedes, viz. the second Brahma/n/a of the third
adhyaya of the B/ri/hadara/n/yaka. The discussion there first turns upon
the grahas and atigrahas, i.e. the senses and organs and their objects,
and Yajnavalkya thereupon explains that death, by which everything is
overcome, is itself overcome by