y
point back to the Brahman spoken of before. The words, 'The teacher will
tell you the way' (which form the last clause of the concluding
passage), merely promise an explanation of the way, and thus preclude
the idea of another topic being started. The teacher thereupon saying,
'As water does not cling to a lotus leaf, so no evil deed clings to one
who knows it' (which words intervene between the concluding speech of
the fires and the information given by the teacher about the person
within the eye) declares that no evil attacks him who knows the person
within the eye, and thereby shows the latter to be Brahman. It thus
appears that the teacher's intention is to speak about that Brahman
which had formed the topic of the instruction of the fires; to represent
it at first as located in the eye and possessing the qualities of
Sa/m/yadvama and the like, and to point out afterwards that he who thus
knows passes on to light and so on. He therefore begins by saying, 'That
person that is seen in the eye that is the Self.'

16. And on account of the statement of the way of him who has heard the
Upanishads.

The person placed in the eye is the highest lord for the following
reason also. From /s/ruti as well as sm/ri/ti we are acquainted with the
way of him who has heard the Upanishads or the secret knowledge, i.e.
who knows Brahman. That way, called the path of the gods, is described
(Pra. Up. I, 10), 'Those who have sought the Self by penance,
abstinence, faith, and knowledge gain by the northern path the sun. This
is the home of the spirits, the immortal, free from fear, the highest.
From thence they do not return;' and also (Bha. Gita VIII, 24), 'Fire,
light, the bright fortnight, the six months of the northern progress of
the sun, on that way those who know Brahman go, when they have died, to
Brahman.' Now that very same way is seen to be stated, in our text, for
him who knows the person within the eye. For we read (Ch. Up. IV, 15,
5), 'Now whether people perform obsequies for him or no he goes to
light;' and later on, 'From the sun (he goes) to the moon, from the moon
to lightning. There is a person not human, he leads them to Brahman.
This is the path of the gods, the path that leads to Brahman. Those who
proceed on that path do not return to the life of man.' From this
description of the way which is known to be the way of him who knows
Brahman we ascertain that the person within the eye is Brahman.

17. (The person wi