passage, further
follows from the declaration that the fruit of its cognition is
immortality. For that immortality is the fruit of the knowledge of
Brahman is known, for instance, from the mantra, 'A man who knows him
only passes over death, there is no other path to go' (/S/vet. Up. VI,
15).--That immortality which the purvapakshin asserts to be sometimes
represented as the fruit of the knowledge of the air is a merely
relative one; for there (i.e. in the chapter from which the passage is
quoted) at first the highest Self is spoken of, by means of a new topic
being started (B/ri/. Up. III, 4), and thereupon the inferior nature of
the air and so on is referred to. ('Everything else is evil.')--That in
the passage under discussion the highest Self is meant appears finally
from the general subject-matter; for the question (asked by Na/k/iketas
in I, 2, 14, 'That which thou seest as neither this nor that, as neither
effect nor cause, as neither past nor future tell me that') refers to
the highest Self.

40. The light (is Brahman), on account of that (Brahman) being seen (in
the scriptural passage).

We read in Scripture, 'Thus does that serene being, arising from this
body, appear in its own form as soon as it has approached the highest
light' (Ch. Up. VIII, 12, 3). Here the doubt arises whether the word
'light' denotes the (physical) light, which is the object of sight and
dispels darkness, or the highest Brahman.

The purvapakshin maintains that the word 'light' denotes the well-known
(physical) light, because that is the conventional sense of the word.
For while it is to be admitted that in another passage, discussed under
I, 1, 24, the word 'light' does, owing to the general topic of the
chapter, divest itself of its ordinary meaning and denote Brahman, there
is in our passage no similar reason for setting the ordinary meaning
aside. Moreover, it is stated in the chapter treating of the na/d/is of
the body, that a man going to final release reaches the sun ('When he
departs from this body then he departs upwards by those very rays;' Ch.
Up. VIII, 6, 5). Hence we conclude that the word 'light' denotes, in our
passage, the ordinary light.

To this we make the following reply.--The word 'light' can denote the
highest Brahman only, on account of that being seen. We see that in the
whole chapter Brahman is carried on as the topic of discussion. For the
Self, which is free from sin, &c. is introduced as the general
subj