The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s7.t3.96

v2.c40.s7.t3.96

The early Upaniṣads contain no clear trace of the doctrine which is later found in the Buddhism of the Sarvāstivādins,² and which discriminates between the power of knowledge to remove causes of existence and that of ecstasy, assigning to the latter alone the power of suppressing all material elements and all sensuous consciousness, knowledge dealing with mental elements and mental consciousness. Such a distinction has every appearance of being an excrescence on the original Buddhist doctrine, evoked by the desire to find a logical place for ecstasy as opposed to mere knowledge, but it may have been early in appearing.