In their present form several differences remain to be pointed out between the Vedic period and that of the Upanishads. The goal of the soul, the two paths of gods and of _brahma_, have been indicated. As already explained, the road to the absolute _brahma_ lies beyond the path to the conditioned _brahma_. Opposed to this is the path that leads to the world of heaven, whence, when good works have been exhausted, the spirit descends to a new birth on earth. The course of this second path is conceived to be the dark half of the moon, and so back to man. Both roads lead first to the moon, then one goes on to _brahma_, the other returns to earth. It will be seen that good works are regarded as buoying a man up for a time, till, like gas in a balloon, they lose their force, and he sinks down again. What then becomes of the virtue of a man who enters the absolute _brahma,_ and descends no more? He himself goes to the world where there is "no sorrow and no snow," where he lives forever (_Brihad [=A]ran_. 5. 10); but "his beloved relations get his virtue, and the relations he does not love get his evil" (_K[=a]ush[=i]t. Up_. 1. 4). In this Upanishad fire, sun, moon, and lightning die out, and reappear as _brahma_. This is the doctrine of the _Götterdämmerung_, and succession of aeons with their divinities (2. 12). Here again is it distinctly stated that _pr[=a]na_, breath, is _brahma_; that is, spirit is the absolute (2. 13). What becomes of them that die ignorant of the ego? They go either to the worlds of evil spirits, which are covered with darkness--the same antithesis of light and darkness, as good and evil, that was seen in the Br[=a]hmanas--or are reborn on earth again like the wicked (_[=I]ç[=a]_, 3). It is to be noted that at times all the parts of a man are said to become immortal. For just as different rivers enter the ocean and their names and forms are lost in it, so the sixteen parts of a man sink into the godhead and he becomes without parts and immortal (_Praçna Up_. 6. 5); a purely pantheistic view of absorption, in distinction from the Vedic view of heaven, which latter, in the form of immortal joy hereafter, still lingers in the earlier Upanishads.