no more consciousness.[26] I have spoken.’  Thus said Y[=a]jnavalkya.  Then said M[=a]itrey[=i]:  ’Truly my Lord has bewildered me in saying that after death there is no more consciousness.’  And Y[=a]jnavalkya said:  ’I say nothing bewildering, but what suffices for understanding.  For where there is as it were duality (dv[=a]itam), there one sees, smells, hears, addresses, notices, knows another; but when all the universe has become mere ego, with what should one smell, see, hear, address, notice, know any one (else)?  How can one know him through whom he knows this all, how can he know the knower (as something different)?  The ego is to be described by negations alone, the incomprehensible, imperishable, unattached, unfettered; the ego neither suffers nor fails.  Thus, M[=a]itrey[=i], hast thou been instructed.  So much for immortality.’  And having spoken thus Y[=a]jnavalkya went away (into the forest).

Returning to the Upanishad, of which an outline was given in the beginning of this chapter, one finds a state of things which, in general, may be said to be characteristic of the whole Upanishad period.  The same vague views in regard to cosmogony and eschatology obtain in all save the outspoken sectarian tracts, and the same uncertainty in regard to man’s future fate prevails in this whole cycle.[27] A few extracts will show this.  According to the Ch[=a]ndogya (4. 17. 1), a personal creator, the old Father-god of the Br[=a]hmanas, Praj[=a]pati, made the elements proceed from the worlds he had ‘brooded’ over (or had done penance over, abhyatapat).  In 3. 19. 1, not-being was first; this became being (with the mundane egg, etc.).  In sharp contradiction (6. 2. 1):  ’being was the first thing, it willed,’ etc., a conscious divinity, as is seen in ib. 3. 2, where it is a ‘deity,’ producing elements as ‘deities’ (ib. 8. 6) which it enters ‘with the living [=a]tm[=a],’ and so develops names and forms (so T[=a]itt. 2. 7).  The latter is the prevailing view of the Upanishad.  In 1. 7. 5 ff. the [=a]tm[=a] is the same with the universal [=a]tm[=a]; in 3. 12. 7, the brahma is the same with ether without and within, unchanging; in 3. 13. 7, the ’light above heaven’ is identical with the light in man; in 3. 14. 1, all is brahma (neuter), and this is an intelligent universal spirit.  Like the ether is the [=a]tm[=a] in the heart, this is brahma (ib. 2 ff.); in 4. 3. air and breath are the two ends (so in the argument above, these are immortal as distinguished from all else); in 4. 10. 5 yad v[=a]v[=a] ka[.m] tad eva kham (brahma is ether); in 4. 15. 1, the ego is brahma; in 5. 18. 1 the universal ego is identified with the particular ego ([=a]tm[=a]); in 6. 8 the ego is the True, with which one unites in dreamless sleep; in 6. 15. 1, into par[=a] devat[=a] or ‘highest divinity’ enters man’s spirit, like salt in water (ib. 13).  In 7. 15-26, a view but half correct is stated to be that ‘breath’ is all, but it is better to know that yo bh[=u]m[=a] tad am[r.]tam, the immortal (all) is infinity, which rests in its own greatness, with a corrective ‘but perhaps it doesn’t’ (yadi v[=a] na).  This infinity is ego and [=a]tm[=a].[28]