II. Later Vedanta.--S'ankara's system in the main follows these doctrines. He holds that the truly enlightened become immediately one with Brahma ( section 24). But those souls which are bound in the empirical world must accordingly pass through empirical spheres of recompense. They who have the lower or exoteric knowledge and worship the "qualified Brahma" ( section 12) pass through the "Way of the Gods" to the paradise called the "world of Brahma"; here according to their merits they either gain by degrees the saving knowledge which transports them for ever to the Absolute Brahma (krama-mukti), or else they have due enjoyment of heavenly bliss until their "works" have shrunk to a residue (anus'aya), whereupon they descend to honourable earthly incarnations. They who have done pious works travel by the "Way of the Fathers" to the moon, where they share the pleasures of paradise

with the gods, and thence in due time return to earth. Those who have neither knowledge nor good works pass to hell, there to expiate their sins in part before rebirth in lower forms; and besides hell S'ankara, following the obscure words of the Ch., admits a "third place" of punishment, viz. rebirth as the lowest and most ephemeral animals (on Brahma-sutra, III. i. 8 f.).

When men of inferior knowledge or good works die, their sense-functions are merged into the manas, manas into "breaths," "breaths" into the individual soul, which together with the "subtle body" passes into the heart, of which the peak is now lit up (B.A. IV. iv. 2); thence the soul of the man of lower knowledge travels out by the sushumna (an imaginary vein leading to the top of the head) by the road of the sun's rays (Ch. VIII. vi. 5), to the "Way of the Gods," but that of the man of good works issues by way of the other 100 chief veins of the body into the "Way of the Fathers" (on Brahma-sutra IV. ii. 17 f.). On IV. iii. 1 f. S'ankara endeavours to reconcile the discrepant lists of the stations in the "Way of the Gods" given in Ch. IV. xv. 5, V. x. 1, B.A. VI. ii. 15, and Kau. I. iii., and points out that by their names are to be understood their presiding deities. As regards the road of return to rebirth, he follows Ch. V. x. 5 f. and B.A. VI. ii. 16 (on III. i. 22 f.).