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obtain brahma his desires must be weak, his knowledge strong; but sacrifice is not to be put away as useless. The disciplinary teaching of the sacrifice is a necessary preparation for highest wisdom. It is here that the Upanishads, which otherwise are to a great extent on the highway to Buddhism, practically contrast with it. Buddhism ignores the sacrifice and the stadia in a priest's life. The Upanishads retain them, but only to throw them over at the end when one has learned not to need them. Philosophically there is no place for the ritual in the Upanishad doctrine; but their teachers stood too much under the dominion of the Br[ra]hmanas to ignore the ritual. They kept it as a means of perfecting the knowledge of what was essential.
So 'by wisdom' it is said 'one gets immortality.' The Spirit develops gradually in man; by means of the mortal he desires the immortal; whereas other animals have only hunger and thirst as a kind of understanding, and they are reborn according to their knowledge as beasts again. Such is the teaching of another of the Upanishads, the [=A]itareya (=A]ranyaka.
This Upanishad contains some rather striking passages: "Whatever man attains, he desires to go beyond it; if he should reach heaven itself he would desire to go beyond it" (2. 3. 3. 1). "Brahma is the A, thither goes the ego" (2. 3. 8. 7). "A is the whole of Speech, and Speech is Truth, and Truth is Spirit" (2. 3. 6. 5-14).[16] "The Spirit brooded over the water, and form (matter) was born" (2. 4. 3. 1 ff.); so physically water is the origin of all things" (2. 1. 8. 1).[17] "Whatever belongs to the father belongs to the son, whatever belongs to the son belongs to the father" (ib.). "Man has three births: he is born of his mother, reborn in the person of his son, and finds his highest birth in death" (2.5).
In the exposition of these two Upanishads one gets at once the sum of them all. The methods, the illustrations, even the doctrines, differ in detail; but in the chief end and object of the Upanishads, and in the principle of knowledge as a means of attaining brahma, they are united. This it is that causes the refutation of the Vedic 'being from not-being.' It is even said in the (=Alitareya that the gods worshipped breath (the spirit)
