The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s9.21

v2.c40.s9.21

the dreamer has false knowledge, the sleeper has none. It is obviously impossible to make much of this refinement and still less of the four subdivisions of it which a later Upaniṣad, the Nṛsiṅhottara,¹ invents. Oltramare,² while recognizing the possibility that even in the period of the Upaniṣads there may have been felt the necessity of making some effort to supply an ideal which would not, like the established conception, find the only true reality in an entity³ deprived of that consciousness which is in experience the most essential and real part of existence, admits that in this conception of the Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad we have nothing more than a logical construction, even if in ultimate analysis the phenomena of ecstasy may have given a basis for the conception.