"As all waters have their meeting place in the sea, all touch in the skin, all tastes in the tongue, all odours in the nose, all colours in the eye, all sounds in the ear, all percepts in the mind, all knowledge in the heart, all actions in the hands....As a lump of salt has no inside nor outside and is nothing but taste, so has this Âtman neither inside nor outside and is nothing but knowledge. Having risen from out these elements it (the human soul) vanishes with them. When it has departed (after death) there is no more consciousness." Here Maitreyî professes herself bewildered but Yâjñavalkya continues "I say nothing bewildering. Verily, beloved, that Âtman is imperishable and indestructible. When there is as it were duality, then one sees the other, one tastes the other, one salutes the other, one hears the other, one touches the other, one knows the other. But when the Âtman only is all this, how should we see, taste, hear, touch or know another? How can we know him by whose power we know all this? That Âtman is to be described by no, no (neti, neti). He is incomprehensible for he cannot be comprehended, indestructible for he cannot be destroyed, unattached for he does not attach himself: he knows no bonds, no suffering, no decay. How, O beloved, can one know the knower?" And having so spoken, Yâjñavalkya went away into the forest. In another verse of the same work it is declared that "This great unborn Âtman (or Self) undecaying, undying, immortal, fearless, is indeed Brahman." It is interesting that this doctrine, evidently regarded as the quintessence of Yâjñavalkya's knowledge, should be imparted to a woman. It is not easy to translate. Âtman, of course, means self and is so rendered by Max Müller in this passage, but it seems to me that this rendering jars on the English ear for it inevitably suggests the individual self and selfishness, whereas Âtman means the universal spirit which is Self, because it is the highest (or only) Reality and Being, not definable in terms of anything else. Nothing, says Yâjñavalkya, has any value, meaning, or indeed reality except in relation to this Self[183]. The whole world including the Vedas and religion is an emanation from him. The passage at which Maitreyî expresses her bewilderment is obscure, but the reply is more definite. The Self is indestructible but still it is incorrect to speak of the soul having knowledge and perception after death, for knowledge and perception imply duality, a subject and an object. But when the human soul and the universal Âtman are one, there is no duality and no human expression can be correctly used about the Âtman. Whatever you say of it, the answer must be _neti, neti_, it is not like that[184]; that is to say, the ordinary language used about the individual soul is not applicable to the Âtman or to the human soul when regarded as identical with it.