It is much more difficult to indicate the precise teaching of the Upanishads concerning the original relation of the individual soul to the highest Self, although there can be no doubt that it has to be viewed as proceeding from the latter, and somehow forming a part of it. Negatively we are entitled to say that the doctrine, according to which the soul is merely brahma bhrantam or brahma mayopadhikam, is in no way countenanced by the majority of the passages bearing on the question. If the emission of the elements, described in the Chandogya and referred to above, is a real process—of which we saw no reason to doubt—the jiva atman with which the highest Self enters into the emitted elements is equally real, a true part or emanation of Brahman itself.
After having in this way shortly reviewed the chief elements of Vedantic doctrine according to the Upanishads, we may briefly consider Sa@nkara’s system and mode of interpretation—with whose details we had frequent opportunities of finding fault—as a whole. It has been said before that the task of reducing the teaching of the whole of the Upanishads to a system consistent and free from contradictions is an intrinsically impossible one. But the task once being given, we are quite ready to admit that Sa@nkara’s system is most probably the best which can be devised. While unable to allow that the Upanishads recognise a lower and higher knowledge of Brahman, in fact the distinction of a lower and higher Brahman, we yet acknowledge that the adoption of that distinction furnishes the interpreter with an instrument of extraordinary power for reducing to an orderly whole the heterogeneous material presented by the old theosophic treatises. This becomes