The methods and results of this half-philosophical literature will most easily be understood by a few examples.  But, before these are given, it will be necessary to emphasize the colloquial and scrappy nature of the teaching.  Legend, parable, ritualistic absurdities, belief in gods, denial of gods, belief in heaven, denial of heaven, are all mingled, and for a purpose.  For some men are able, and some are unable, to receive the true light of knowledge.  But man’s fate depends on his knowledge.  The wise man becomes hereafter what his knowledge has prepared him to be.  Not every spirit is fitted for immortality, but only the spirit of them that have wisely desired it, or, rather, not desired it; for every desire must have been extinguished before one is fitted for this end.  Hence, with advancing belief in absorption and pantheism, there still lingers, and not as a mere superfluity, the use of sacrifice and penance.  Rites and the paraphernalia of religion are essential till one learns that they are unessential.  Desire will be gratified till one learns that the most desirable thing is lack of desire.  But so long as one desires even the lack of desire he is still in the fetters of desire.  The way is long to the extinction of emotion, but its attainment results in happiness that is greater than delight; in peace that surpasses joy.

In the exposition of this doctrine the old gods are retained as figures.  They are not real gods.  But they are existent forms of God.  They are portions of the absolute, a form of the Eternal, even as man is a form of the same.  Absolute being, again, is described as anthropomorphic.  ‘This is that’ under a certain form.  Incessantly made is the attempt to explain the identity of the absolute with phenomena.  The power brahma, which is originally applied to prayer, is now taken as absolute being, and this, again, must be equated with the personal spirit (ego, self, [=a]tm[=a]).  One finds himself back in the age of Vedic speculation when he reads of prayer (or penance) and power as one.  For, as was shown above, the Rig Veda already recognizes that prayer is power.  There the word for power, brahma, is used only as equivalent of prayer, and Brihaspati or Brahmanaspati is literally the ‘god of power,’ as he is interpreted by the priests.  The significance of the other great word of this period, namely [=a]tm[=a], is not at all uncertain, but to translate it is difficult.  It is breath, spirit, self, soul.  Yet, since in its original sense it corresponds to spiritus (comparable to athmen), the word spirit, which also signifies the real person, perhaps represents it best.  We shall then render brahma and [=a]tm[=a] by the absolute and the ego or spirit, respectively; or leave them, which is perhaps the best way, in their native form.  The physical breath, pr[=a]na, is occasionally used just like [=a]tm[=a]. Thus it is said that all the gods are one god, and this is pr[=a]na, identical with brahma (Brihad [=A]ranyaka Upanishad, 3.9.9); or pr[=a]na is so used as to be the same with spirit, though, on the other hand, ‘breath is born of spirit’ (Pracna Up. 3.3), just as in the Rig Veda (above) it is said that all comes from the breath of God.