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 knowledge come as it were into still greater darkness” (Ic[=a], 9).  Here, what is not real knowledge means good works, sacrifice, etc.  But the sacrifice is not discarded.  To those people capable only of attaining to rectitude, sacrifices, and belief in gods there is given some bliss hereafter; but to him that is risen above this, who knows the ego (Spirit) and real being, such bliss is no bliss.  His bliss is union with the Spirit.

This is the completion of Upanishad philosophy.  Before it is a stage where bliss alone, not absorption, is taught.[19] But what is the ego, spirit or self ([=a]tm[=a])?  First of all it is conscious; next it is not the Person, for the Person is produced by the [=a]tm[=a].  Since this Person is the type of the personal god, it is evident that the ego is regarded as lying back of personality.  Nevertheless, the teachers sometimes stop with the latter.  The developed view is that the immortality of the personal creator is commensurate only with that of the world which he creates.  It is for this reason that in the Mundaka (1. 2. 10) it is said that fools regard fulfillment of desire in heavenly happiness as the best thing; for although they have their ’reward in the top of heaven, yet, when the elevation caused by their good works ends, as it will end, when the buoyant power of good works is exhausted, then they drop down to earth again.  Hence, to worship the creator as the [=a]tm[=a] is indeed productive of temporary pleasure, but no more.  “If a man worship another divinity, devat[=a], with the idea that he and the god are different, he does not know” (Brihad [=A]ran.  Up. 1. 4. 10).  “Without passion and without parts” is the brahma (Mund. 2. 2. 9).  The further doctrine, therefore, that all except brahma