n in Hinduism and though
Buddhism rejects the notion of union with the supreme spirit yet it
attaches importance to meditation and makes Samadhi or rapture the crown
of the perfect life. In this, as in other matters, the teaching of the
Upanishads is manifold and unsystematic compared with later doctrines.
The older passages ascribe to the soul three states corresponding to the
bodily conditions of waking, dream-sleep, and deep dreamless sleep, and
the Brihad-Aranyaka affirms of the last (IV. 3. 32): "This is the Brahma
world. This is his highest world, this is his highest bliss. All other
creatures live on a small portion of that bliss." But even in some
Upanishads of the second stratum (Mandukya, Maitrayana) we find added a
fourth state, Caturtha or more commonly Turiya, in which the bliss
attainable in deep sleep is accompanied by consciousness[190]. This
theory and various practices founded on it develop rapidly.

4

The explanation of dreamless sleep as supreme bliss and Yajnavalkya's
statement that the soul after death cannot be said to know or feel, may
suggest that union with Brahman is another name for annihilation. But
that is not the doctrine of the Upanishads though a European perhaps
might say that the consciousness contemplated is so different from
ordinary human consciousness that it should not bear the same name. In
another passage[191] Yajnavalkya himself explains "when he does not
know, yet he is knowing though he does not know. For knowing is
inseparable from the knower, because it cannot perish. But there is no
second, nothing else different from him that he could know." A common
formula for Brahman in the later philosophy is Saccidananda, Being,
Thought and Joy[192]. This is a just summary of the earlier teaching. We
have already seen how the Atman is recognized as the only Reality. Its
intellectual character is equally clearly affirmed. Thus the
Brihad-Aranyaka (III. 7. 23) says: "There is no seer beside him, no
hearer beside him, no perceiver beside him, no knower beside him. This
is thy Self, the ruler within, the immortal. Everything distinct from
him is subject to pain." This idea that pain and fear exist only as far
as a man makes a distinction between his own self and the real Self is
eloquently developed in the division of the Taittiriya Upanishad called
the Chapter of Bliss. "He who knows Brahman" it declares, "which exists,
which is conscious, which is without end, as hidden in the dept