As the anecdote shows, they sought such a constant and unchangeable essence in man as was beyond the limits of any change.  This inmost essence has sometimes been described as pure subject-object-less consciousness, the reality, and the bliss.  He is the seer of all seeing, the hearer of all hearing and the knower of all knowledge.  He sees but is not seen, hears but is not heard, knows but is not known.  He is the light of all lights.  He is like a lump of salt, with no inner or outer, which consists through and through entirely of savour; as in truth this Atman has no inner or outer, but consists through and through entirely of knowledge.  Bliss is not an attribute of it but it is bliss itself.  The state of Brahman is thus likened unto the state of dreamless sleep.  And he who has reached this bliss is beyond any fear.  It is dearer to us than

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[Footnote 1:  Cha.  VIII. 7-12.]

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son, brother, wife, or husband, wealth or prosperity.  It is for it and by it that things appear dear to us.  It is the dearest par excellence, our inmost Atman.  All limitation is fraught with pain; it is the infinite alone that is the highest bliss.  When a man receives this rapture, then is he full of bliss; for who could breathe, who live, if that bliss had not filled this void (akas’a)?  It is he who behaves as bliss.  For when a man finds his peace, his fearless support in that invisible, supportless, inexpressible, unspeakable one, then has he attained peace.

Place of Brahman in the Upani@sads.

There is the atman not in man alone but in all objects of the universe, the sun, the moon, the world; and Brahman is this atman.  There is nothing outside the atman, and therefore there is no plurality at all.  As from a lump of clay all that is made of clay is known, as from an ingot of black iron all that is made of black iron is known, so when this atman the Brahman is known everything else is known.  The essence in man and the essence of the universe are one and the same, and it is Brahman.

Now a question may arise as to what may be called the nature of the phenomenal world of colour, sound, taste, and smell.  But we must also remember that the Upani@sads do not represent so much a conceptional system of philosophy as visions of the seers who are possessed by the spirit of this Brahman.  They do not notice even the contradiction between the Brahman as unity and nature in its diversity.  When the empirical aspect of diversity attracts their notice, they affirm it and yet declare that it is all Brahman.  From Brahman it has come forth and to it will it return.  He has himself created it out of himself and then entered into it as its inner controller (antaryamin).  Here is thus a glaring dualistic trait of the world of matter and Brahman as its controller, though in other places we find it asserted most emphatically