Scripture as well as Sm/ri/ti declares that immortality is not to be reached but through the knowledge of the highest Self.—­The statement further that through the knowledge of the Self everything becomes known can be taken in its direct literal sense only if by the Self we understand the highest cause.  And to take it in a non-literal sense (as the purvapakshin proposes) is inadmissible, on account of the explanation given of that statement in a subsequent passage, viz.  ’Whosoever looks for the Brahman class elsewhere than in the Self, is abandoned by the Brahman class.’  Here it is said that whoever erroneously views this world with its Brahmans and so on, as having an independent existence apart from the Self, is abandoned by that very world of which he has taken an erroneous view; whereby the view that there exists any difference is refuted.  And the immediately subsequent clause, ‘This everything is the Self,’ gives us to understand that the entire aggregate of existing things is non-different from the Self; a doctrine further confirmed by the similes of the drum and so on.—­By explaining further that the Self about which he had been speaking is the cause of the universe of names, forms, and works (’There has been breathed forth from this great Being what we have as Rigveda,’ &c.) Yaj/n/avalkya again shows that it is the highest Self.—­To the same conclusion he leads us by declaring, in the paragraph which treats of the natural centres of things, that the Self is the centre of the whole world with the objects, the senses and the mind, that it has neither inside nor outside, that it is altogether a mass of knowledge.—­From all this it follows that what the text represents as the object of sight and so on is the highest Self.

We now turn to the remark made by the purvapakshin that the passage teaches the individual soul to be the object of sight, because it is, in the early part of the chapter denoted as something dear.

20. (The circumstance of the soul being represented as the object of sight) indicates the fulfilment of the promissory statement; so A/s/marathya thinks.

The fact that the text proclaims as the object of sight that Self which is denoted as something, dear indicates the fulfilment of the promise made in the passages, ‘When the Self is known all this is known,’ ’All this is that Self.’  For if the individual soul were different from the highest Self, the knowledge of the latter would not imply the knowledge of the former, and thus the promise that through the knowledge of one thing everything is to be known would not be fulfilled.  Hence the initial statement aims at representing the individual Self and the highest Self as non-different for the purpose of fulfilling the promise made.—­This is the opinion of the teacher A/s/marathya[243].

21. (The initial statement identifies the individual soul and the highest Self) because the soul when it will depart (from the body) is such (i.e. one with the highest Self); thus Au/d/ulomi thinks.