The "determinations" that play the most important part in S'ankara's system are those which form the structure of individual consciousness by constituting the idea of an embodied individual soul, jiva. These are the pranas, or "breaths," the "works," the "subtle body," the gross body, and sometimes also the sensations and phenomenal perceptions (see section 18). A favourite metaphor by which Sankara illustrates his theory of upadhis is that of a jar. The space enclosed within a certain jar is really the same as the infinite space filling the universe, and the conception of it as limited by the jar nowise limits the infinitude of space itself; and so the conception of the Self as determined by the forms of embodied existence nowise excludes the identity of the embodied Self with the absolute Brahma. The soul itself, says S'ankara (on II. iii. 40), is totally incapable of (empiric) action, whether as subject or object; its apparent activity, e.g. in desire, grief, etc., is based merely upon Ignorance, for the activity arises because the soul falsely ascribes to itself the properties of "determinations" (cf. the definitions of the individual soul given on IV. ii. 4 as "the intelligent self, vijnanatma, having the determinations of ignorance, works, and previous experience").

The Vedantic schools which followed S'ankara