is is an examination of Bliss;' 'He reaches that Self consisting of
Bliss;' and again, II, 9, 'He who knows the Bliss of Brahman fears
nothing;' and in addition, 'He understood that Bliss is Brahman' (III,
6). And in another scriptural passage also (B/ri/. Up. III, 9, 28),
'Knowledge and bliss is Brahman,' we see the word 'bliss' applied just
to Brahman. As, therefore, the word 'bliss' is repeatedly used with
reference to Brahman, we conclude that the Self consisting of bliss is
Brahman also. The objection that the Self consisting of bliss can only
denote the secondary Self (the Sa/m/sarin), because it forms a link in a
series of secondary Selfs, beginning with the one consisting of food, is
of no force, for the reason that the Self consisting of bliss is the
innermost of all. The /S/astra, wishing to convey information about the
primary Self, adapts itself to common notions, in so far as it at first
refers to the body consisting of food, which, although not the Self, is
by very obtuse people identified with it; it then proceeds from the body
to another Self, which has the same shape with the preceding one, just
as the statue possesses the form of the mould into which the molten
brass had been poured; then, again, to another one, always at first
representing the Non-Self as the Self, for the purpose of easier
comprehension; and it finally teaches that the innermost Self[106],
which consists of bliss, is the real Self. Just as when a man, desirous
of pointing out the star Arundhati to another man, at first points to
several stars which are not Arundhati as being Arundhati, while only the
star pointed out in the end is the real Arundhati; so here also the Self
consisting of bliss is the real Self on account of its being the
innermost (i.e. the last). Nor can any weight be allowed to the
objection that the attribution of joy and so on, as head, &c., cannot
possibly refer to the real Self; for this attribution is due to the
immediately preceding limiting condition (viz. the Self consisting of
understanding, the so-called vij/n/anakosa), and does not really belong
to the real Self. The possession of a bodily nature also is ascribed to
the Self of bliss, only because it is represented as a link in the chain
of bodies which begins with the Self consisting of food, and is not
ascribed to it in the same direct sense in which it is predicated of the
transmigrating Self. Hence the Self consisting of bliss is the highest
Brahman.