Upanishads. The goal of the
soul, the two paths of gods and of _brahma_, have been indicated. As
already explained, the road to the absolute _brahma_ lies beyond the
path to the conditioned _brahma_. Opposed to this is the path that
leads to the world of heaven, whence, when good works have been
exhausted, the spirit descends to a new birth on earth. The course of
this second path is conceived to be the dark half of the moon, and so
back to man. Both roads lead first to the moon, then one goes on to
_brahma_, the other returns to earth. It will be seen that good works
are regarded as buoying a man up for a time, till, like gas in a
balloon, they lose their force, and he sinks down again. What then
becomes of the virtue of a man who enters the absolute _brahma,_ and
descends no more? He himself goes to the world where there is "no
sorrow and no snow," where he lives forever (_Brihad [=A]ran_. 5. 10);
but "his beloved relations get his virtue, and the relations he does
not love get his evil" (_K[=a]ush[=i]t. Up_. 1. 4). In this Upanishad
fire, sun, moon, and lightning die out, and reappear as _brahma_. This
is the doctrine of the _Goetterdaemmerung_, and succession of aeons with
their divinities (2. 12). Here again is it distinctly stated that
_pr[=a]na_, breath, is _brahma_; that is, spirit is the absolute (2.
13).

What becomes of them that die ignorant of the ego? They go either to
the worlds of evil spirits, which are covered with darkness--the same
antithesis of light and darkness, as good and evil, that was seen in
the Br[=a]hmanas--or are reborn on earth again like the wicked
(_[=I]c[=a]_, 3).

It is to be noted that at times all the parts of a man are
said to become immortal. For just as different rivers enter the ocean
and their names and forms are lost in it, so the sixteen parts of a
man sink into the godhead and he becomes without parts and immortal
(_Pracna Up_. 6. 5); a purely pantheistic view of absorption, in
distinction from the Vedic view of heaven, which latter, in the form
of immortal joy hereafter, still lingers in the earlier Upanishads.

It is further to be observed as the crowning point of these
speculations that, just as the bliss of emancipation must not be
desired, although it is desirable, so too, though knowledge is the
fundamental condition of emancipation, yet is delight in the true a
fatal error: "They that revere what is not knowledge enter into blind
darkness; they that delight in kn