w, what trouble can there be to him who beholds that unity?'
(Is. Up. 7.) We must likewise quote the passage,--B/ri/. Up. I, 4, 10,
('Seeing this the /Ri/shi Vamadeva understood: I was Manu, I was the
sun,') in order to exclude the idea of any action taking place between
one's seeing Brahman and becoming one with the universal Self; for that
passage is analogous to the following one, 'standing he sings,' from
which we understand that no action due to the same agent intervenes
between the standing and the singing. Other scriptural passages show
that the removal of the obstacles which lie in the way of release is the
only fruit of the knowledge of Brahman; so, for instance, 'You indeed
are our father, you who carry us from our ignorance to the other shore'
(Pr. Up. VI, 8); 'I have heard from men like you that he who knows the
Self overcomes 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 i