Now an impartial consideration of those passages shows I think, beyond any doubt, that what is meant there by the knowledge which leads through the sun to the world of Brahman is the highest knowledge of which the devotee is capable, and that the world of Brahman to which his knowledge enables him to proceed denotes the highest state which he can ever reach, the state of final release, if we choose to call it by that name.—­Ch.  Up.  V, 10 says, ’Those who know this (viz. the doctrine of the five fires), and those who in the forest follow faith and austerities go to light,’ &c.—­Ch.  Up.  IV, 15 is manifestly intended to convey the true knowledge of Brahman; Upako/s/ala’s teacher himself represents the instruction given by him as superior to the teaching of the sacred fires.—­Ch.  Up.  VIII, 6, 5 quotes the old sloka which says that the man moving upwards by the artery penetrating the crown of the head reaches the Immortal.—­Kaush.  Up.  I, 2—­which gives the most detailed account of the ascent of the soul—­contains no intimation whatever of the knowledge of Brahman, which leads up to the Brahman world, being of an inferior nature.—­Mu/nd/.  Up.  I, 2, 9 agrees with the Chandogya in saying that ’Those who practise penance and faith in the forest, tranquil, wise, and living on alms, depart free from passion, through the sun, to where that immortal Person dwells whose nature is imperishable,’ and nothing whatever in the context countenances the assumption that not the highest knowledge and the highest Person are there referred to.—­B/ri/.  Up.  IV, 4, 8 quotes old slokas clearly referring to the road of the gods (’the small old path’), on which ’sages who know Brahman move on to the svargaloka and thence higher on as entirely free.—­That path was found by Brahman, and on it goes whoever knows Brahman.’—­B/ri/.  Up.  VI, 2, 15 is another version of the Pa/nk/agnividya, with the variation, ’Those who know this, and those who in the forest worship faith and the True, go to light,’ &c.—­Pra/s/na Up. 1, 10 says, ’Those who have sought the Self by penance, abstinence, faith, and knowledge gain by the northern path Aditya, the sun.  There is the home of the spirits, the immortal free from danger, the highest.  From thence they do not return, for it is the end.’—­Maitr.  Up.  VI, 30 quotes slokas, ’One of them (the arteries) leads upwards, piercing the solar orb:  by it, having stepped beyond the world of Brahman, they go to the highest path.’

All these passages are as clear as can be desired.  The soul of the sage who knows Brahman passes out by the sushum/n/a, and ascends by the path of the gods to the world of Brahman, there to remain for ever in some blissful state.  But, according to Sa@nkara, all these texts are meant to set forth the result of a certain inferior knowledge only, of the knowledge of the conditioned Brahman.  Even in a passage apparently so entirely incapable of more than one interpretation as B/ri/.  Up.  VI, 2, 15,