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/hadâra/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 aparâ and parâ--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 Brâhma/n/a of the third
adhyâya of the B/ri/hadâra/n/yaka. The discussion there first turns upon
the grahas and atigrahas, i.e. the senses and organs and their objects,
and Yâjñavalkya thereupon explains that death, by which everything is
overcome, is itself overcome by water; for death is fire. The colloquy
then turns to what we must consider an altogether new topic, Ârtabhâga
asking, 'When this man (ayam purusha) dies, do the vital spirits depart
from him or not?' and Yâjñavalkya answering, 'No, they are gathered up
in him; he swells, he is inflated; inflated the dead (body) is