The teacher Jaimini is of opinion that those deities lead on the souls
of those only who meditate on the highest Brahman. For in the text 'a
person not human leads them to Brahman' the word Brahman is naturally
taken in its primary sense (i.e. the highest Brahman); the secondary
sense (i.e. the effected Brahman) can be admitted only if there are
other valid reasons to refer the passage to the effected Brahman. And
the alleged impossibility of the soul's going is no such valid reason;
for although Brahman no doubt is present everywhere, Scripture declares
that the soul of the wise frees itself from Nescience only on having
gone to some particular place. That the origination of true knowledge
depends on certain conditions of caste, âsrama, religious duty, purity
of conduct, time, place, and so on, follows from certain scriptural
texts, as e.g. 'Brâhmanas desire to know him through the study of the
Veda' (Bri. Up. IV, 4, 22); in the same way it follows from the text
declaring the soul's going to Brahman that the final realisation of that
highest knowledge which implies the cessation of all Nescience depends
on the soul's going to some particular place. The arguments founded on
texts alleged to declare that the soul of the wise does not pass out of
the body at all we have refuted above. The argument that the
specification implied in the text which mentions _Brahman-worlds_
clearly points to the effected Brahman, i.e. Hiranyagarbha, is equally
invalid. For the compound 'the Brahman-world' is to be explained as'the
world which is Brahman'; just as according to the Pûrva Mîmâmsâ the
compound 'Nishâda-sthapati' denotes a sthapati who is a Nishâda (not a
sthapati of the Nishâdas). A thing even which is known as one only may
be designated by a plural form, as in a mantra one girdle is spoken of
as 'the fetters of Aditi.' And as to the case under discussion, we know
on the authority of Scripture, Smriti, Itihâsa, and Purâna, that the
wonderful worlds springing from the mere will of a perfect and
omnipresent being cannot be but infinite.