as entirely free.--That path was found by Brahman, and on it goes
whoever knows Brahman.'--B/ri/. Up. VI, 2, 15 is another version of the
Pa/ñk/âgnividyâ, with the variation, 'Those who know this, and those who
in the forest worship faith and the True, go to light,' &c.--Pra/s/na
Up. 1, 10 says, 'Those who have sought the Self by penance, abstinence,
faith, and knowledge gain by the northern path Âditya, the sun. There is
the home of the spirits, the immortal free from danger, the highest.
From thence they do not return, for it is the end.'--Maitr. Up. VI, 30
quotes /s/lokas, 'One of them (the arteries) leads upwards, piercing the
solar orb: by it, having stepped beyond the world of Brahman, they go to
the highest path.'

All these passages are as clear as can be desired. The soul of the sage
who knows Brahman passes out by the sushum/n/â, and ascends by the path
of the gods to the world of Brahman, there to remain for ever in some
blissful state. But, according to /S/a@nkara, all these texts are meant
to set forth the result of a certain inferior knowledge only, of the
knowledge of the conditioned Brahman. Even in a passage apparently so
entirely incapable of more than one interpretation as B/ri/. Up. VI, 2,
15, the 'True,' which the holy hermits in the forest are said to
worship, is not to be the highest Brahman, but only
Hira/n/yagarbha!--And why?--Only because the system so demands it, the
system which teaches that those who know the highest Brahman become on
their death one with it, without having to resort to any other place.
The passage on which this latter tenet is chiefly based is B/ri/. Up.
IV, 4, 6, 7, where, with the fate of him who at his death has desires,
and whose soul therefore enters a new body after having departed from
the old one, accompanied by all the prâ/n/as, there is contrasted the
fate of the sage free from all desires. 'But as to the man who does not
desire, who not desiring, freed from desires is satisfied in his