adduced concludes with the same formula, Thou art that subtle essence, and as in the Brihad-Aranyaka salt is used as a metaphor. “’Place this salt in water and then come to me in the morning.’  The son did so and in the morning the father said ’Bring me the salt.’  The son looked for it but found it not, for of course it was melted.  The father said, ’Taste from the surface of the water.  How is it?’ The son replied, ‘It is salt.’  ‘Taste from the middle.  How is it?’ ‘It is salt.’  ‘Taste from the bottom, how is it?’ ‘It is salt.’ ...  The father said, ’Here also in this body you do not perceive the Real, but there it is.  That subtle being by which this universe subsists, it is the Real, it is the Atman and thou, Svetaketu, art It.’”

The writers of these passages have not quite reached Sankara’s point of view, that the Atman is all and the whole universe mere illusion or Maya.  Their thought still tends to regard the universe as something drawn forth from the Atman and then pervaded by it.  But still the main features of the later Advaita, or philosophy of no duality, are there.  All the universe has grown forth from the Atman:  there is no real difference in things, just as all gold is gold whatever it is made into.  The soul is identical with this Atman and after death may be one with it in a union excluding all duality even of perceiver and perceived.

A similar union occurs in sleep.  This idea is important for it is closely connected with another belief which has had far-reaching consequences on thought and practice in India, the belief namely that the soul can attain without death and as the result of mental discipline to union[189] with Brahman.  This idea is common in Hinduism and though Buddhism rejects the notion of union with the supreme spirit yet it attaches importance to meditation and makes Samadhi or rapture the crown of the perfect life.  In this, as in other matters, the teaching of the Upanishads is manifold and unsystematic compared with later doctrines.  The older passages ascribe to the soul three states corresponding to the bodily conditions of waking, dream-sleep, and deep dreamless sleep, and the Brihad-Aranyaka affirms of the last (IV. 3. 32):  “This is the Brahma world.  This is his highest world, this is his highest bliss.  All other creatures live on a small portion of that bliss.”  But even in some Upanishads of the second stratum (Mandukya, Maitrayana) we find added a fourth state, Caturtha or more commonly Turiya, in which the bliss attainable in deep sleep is accompanied by consciousness[190].  This theory and various practices founded on it develop rapidly.

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