section 22. GOD.--These two ideas, empiric servitude to Works and transcendental freedom, leave little room for a Supreme God or moral guide of the experiences of souls. The older texts practically ignore such a power; their polytheistic myths are merely echoes from the Veda, allegorically turned, and when they refer to a supreme deity they mean the higher Self within man. Later authors, however, began occasionally to set up in theistic fashion a distinction between the Self within and the Self without. This finally led to the conception of the later Vedanta, in which the Supreme Self, styled "the Lord" (Is'vara), is given the function of directing as efficient cause the course of "works," so that each comes to its

requital in due season and form, while the direct responsibility for all man's experiences is thrown upon the inward Self. In other circles the same theistic current led to the identification of this Atma-God with one of the great popular deities, usually Vishnu or S'iva; and thus arose the great theologies, of which the most significant is the Bhagavad-gita, a compromise between Upanishadic idealism, Sankhya physics, and practical faith. The first definite theism is in Kath. II. 20 (?), 23, III. i., v. 13, Mund. III. ii. 3, Is'a 8, S'vet. III 20, IV.-VI., etc. Worship of Brahma-Atma is however frequently mentioned in the Upanishads. It is an adoration of the Self either in its unqualified absoluteness (cf. Ch. III. xiv. 1, "Brahma in sooth is this All; it hath therein its beginning, end, and breath; so one should worship it in stillness"), or as allegorically typified by some physical force (see section 5), or as represented by the sacred syllable Om or Aum, upon which see especially Mand. and Pra. v., which sets forth the three degrees of reward for meditation upon one, two, or three elements of this word; cf. S'ankara on Brahma-sutra, I. iii. 13. See also section section 8, 24.

S'ankara (on Brahma-sutra, II. iii. 29) claims that wherever the Vedas and Upanishads represent the absolute Brahma under the form of "determinations" ( section 12), this is for the purpose of worship of Brahma as qualified Supreme, saguna, e.g. in Ch. III. xiv. The conception of the soul's