grief.  I am in grief.  Do, Sir, help me over this grief of mine’ (Ch.  Up.  VII, 1, 3); ’To him after his faults had been rubbed out, the venerable Sanatkumara showed the other side of darkness’ (Ch.  Up.  VII, 26, 2).  The same is the purport of the Sutra, supported by arguments, of (Gautama) Akarya, ’Final release results from the successive removal of wrong knowledge, faults, activity, birth, pain, the removal of each later member of the series depending on the removal of the preceding member’ (Nyay.  Su.  I, i, 2); and wrong knowledge itself is removed by the knowledge of one’s Self being one with the Self of Brahman.

Nor is this knowledge of the Self being one with Brahman a mere (fanciful) combination[73], as is made use of, for instance, in the following passage, ’For the mind is endless, and the Vi/s/vedevas are endless, and he thereby gains the endless world’ (B/ri/.  Up.  III, 1, 9)[74]; nor is it an (in reality unfounded) ascription (superimposition)[75], as in the passages, ’Let him meditate on mind as Brahman,’ and ‘Aditya is Brahman, this is the doctrine’ (Ch.  Up.  III, 18, 1; 19, 1), where the contemplation as Brahman is superimposed on the mind, Aditya and so on; nor, again, is it (a figurative conception of identity) founded on the connection (of the things viewed as identical) with some special activity, as in the passage, ’Air is indeed the absorber; breath is indeed the absorber[76]’ (Ch.  Up.  IV, 3, 1; 3); nor is it a mere (ceremonial) purification of (the Self constituting a subordinate member) of an action (viz. the action of seeing, &c., Brahman), in the same way as, for instance, the act of looking at the sacrificial butter[77].  For if the knowledge of the identity of the Self and Brahman were understood in the way of combination and the like, violence would be done thereby to the connection of the words whose object, in certain passages, it clearly is to intimate the fact of Brahman and the Self being really identical; so, for instance, in the following passages, ‘That art thou’ (Ch.  Up.  VI, 8, 7); ‘I am Brahman’ (B/ri/.  Up.  I, 4, 10); ‘This Self is Brahman’ (B/ri/.  Up.  II, 5, 19).  And other texts which declare that the fruit of the cognition of Brahman is the cessation of Ignorance would be contradicted thereby; so, for instance, ‘The fetter of the heart is broken, all doubts are solved’ (Mu.  Up.  II, 2, 8).  Nor, finally, would it be possible, in that case, satisfactorily to explain the passages which speak of the individual Self becoming Brahman:  such as ‘He who knows Brahman becomes Brahman’ (Mu.  Up.  III, 2, 9).  Hence the knowledge of the unity of Brahman and the Self cannot be of the nature of figurative combination and the like.  The knowledge of Brahman does, therefore, not depend on the active energy of man, but is analogous to the knowledge of those things which are the objects of perception, inference, and so on, and thus depends on the object of knowledge only.  Of such a Brahman or its knowledge it is impossible to establish, by reasoning, any connection with actions.