lds. The brief exposition of his doctrine which we
possess starts from and emphasizes the human self. This self is
Brahman. The doctrine of Uddalaka[767] takes the other side of the
equation: he starts with Brahman and then asserts that Brahman is the
soul. But though he teaches that in the beginning there was one only
without a second, yet he seems to regard the subsequent products of
this Being as external to it and permeated by it. But to Yajnavalkya
is ascribed an important modification of these doctrines, namely, that
the Atman is unknowable and transcendental.[768] It is unknowable
because since it is essentially the knowing subject it can be known
only by itself: it can never become the object of knowledge and
language is inadequate to describe it. All that can be said of it is
_neti_, _neti_, that is no, no: it is not anything which we try to
predicate of it. But he who knows that the individual soul is the
Atman, becomes Atman; being it, he knows it and knows all the world:
he perceives that in all the world there is no plurality. Here the
later doctrine of Maya is adumbrated, though not formulated. Any
system which holds that in reality there is no plurality or, like some
forms of Mahayanist Buddhism, that nothing really exists implies the
operation of this Maya or illusion which makes us see the world as it
appears to us. It may be thought of as mere ignorance, as a failure to
see the universe as it really is: but no doubt the later view of Maya
as a creative energy which fashions the world of phenomena is closely
connected with the half-mythological conceptions found in the
Pancaratra and Saiva philosophy which regard this creative illusion as
a female force--a goddess in fact--inseparably associated with the
deity.

The philosophy of the Upanishads, like all religious thought in India,
is avowedly a quest of happiness and this happiness is found in some
form of union with Brahman. He is perfect bliss, and whatever is
distinct from him is full of suffering.[769] But this sense of the
suffering inherent in existence is less marked in the older Upanishads
and in the Vedanta than in Buddhism and the Sankhya. Those systems
make it their basis and first principle: in the Vedanta the
temperament is the same but the emphasis and direction of the thought
are different. The Sankhya looks at the world and says that salvation
lies in escape into something which has nothing in common with it. But
the Vedantist looks to