The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c9.s3.t4.4

c9.s3.t4.4

While the knower thus mounts by the 101st vein ¹³⁰ to tread the Path of the Gods, which, as the exoteric Path to Liberation, will occupy us further in the following part, the others depart through other veins (p. 1105, 3). The further stages of the Pitṛyâna, upon which Bâdarâyaṇa and Çaṅkara give no further details, are according to the doctrine of the Five Fires, the following, in their order: (1) Smoke, while the Devayâna leads through Flame. Originally in both cases the smoke and flame of the funeral pyre seem to have been meant (although already in Chând. 4, 15, 5, translated above p. 166, the entrance into the arcis, ray or better flame, is made independent of the performance of the funeral ceremony); in our work, which makes the departure of the soul occur, not on the burning, but already on the growing cold of the corpse (p. 402), Çaṅkara explains the “flame” (arcis), as we shall see here after, as “the Godhead presiding over the flame,” and in accordance with this, in the Commentaries on Bṛih. 1059, 11. Chând. p. 341, 13, “Smoke” is also taken to mean the Godhead of the smoke.—The following stages also are referred to the Gods presiding over these phenomena: (2) Night, (3) the halves of the month wherein the moon decreases, (4) the halves of the years wherein the days decrease. We must here think of these not as phases of time, but spatially as planes one above another, through which the soul mounts upward, in order to reach the following stages; these are: (5) the world of the Fathers, (6) (only Chând.) the Ether, (7) the Moon, upon which retribution takes place, subject to the limitations, of which we have now to treat.