to the vital air in any non-figurative sense.  In the second place, cessation of grief cannot take place apart from the knowledge of the highest Self; for, as another scriptural passage declares, ’There is no other path to go’ (Svet.  Up.  VI, 15).  Moreover, after we have read at the outset, ‘Do, Sir, lead me over to the other side of grief’ (Ch.  Up.  VII, 1, 3), we meet with the following concluding words (VII, 26, 2), ’To him, after his faults had been rubbed out, the venerable Sanatkumara showed the other side of darkness.’  The term ‘darkness’ here denotes Nescience, the cause of grief, and so on.—­Moreover, if the instruction terminated with the vital air, it would not be said of the latter that it rests on something else.  But the brahma/n/a (Ch.  Up.  VII, 26, 1) does say, ‘The vital air springs from the Self.’  Nor can it be objected against this last argument that the concluding part of the chapter may refer to the highest Self, while, all the same, the bhuman (mentioned in an earlier part of the chapter) may be the vital air.  For, from the passage (VII, 24, 1), (’Sir, in what does the bhuman rest?  In its own greatness,’ &c.), it appears that the bhuman forms the continuous topic up to the end of the chapter.—­The quality of being the bhuman—­which quality is plenitude—­agrees, moreover, best with the highest Self, which is the cause of everything.

9.  And on account of the agreement of the attributes (mentioned in the text).

The attributes, moreover, which the sacred text ascribes to the bhuman agree well with the highest Self.  The passage, ’Where one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, understands nothing else, that is the bhuman,’ gives us to understand that in the bhuman the ordinary activities of seeing and so on are absent; and that this is characteristic of the highest Self, we know from another scriptural passage, viz.  ’But when the Self only is all this, how should he see another?’ &c. (B/ri/.  Up.  IV, 5, 15).  What is said about the absence of the activities of seeing and so on in the state of deep sleep (Pra.  Up.  IV, 2) is said with the intention of declaring the non-attachedness of the Self, not of describing the nature of the pra/n/a; for the highest Self (not the vital air) is the topic of that passage.  The bliss also of which Scripture speaks as connected with that state is mentioned only in order to show that bliss constitutes the nature of the Self.  For Scripture says (B/ri/.  Up.  IV, 3, 32), ’This is his highest bliss.  All other creatures live on a small portion of that bliss.’—­The passage under discussion also (’The bhuman is bliss.  There is no bliss in that which is little (limited).  The bhuman only is bliss’) by denying the reality of bliss on the part of whatever is perishable shows that Brahman only is bliss as bhuman, i.e. in its plenitude,—­Again, the passage, ’The bhuman is immortality,’ shows that the highest cause is meant; for the immortality of all effected