ABSTRACT
Rebirth is not the only idea to be found in the Upanisads about what happens after death. The Vedic hymns and the Brahmanas contain very varied thoughts on this subject, and these are repeated and developed in the Upanisads. Ideas of liberation are related to ideas of bondage: bondage to the round of rebirth is one such idea, but there is also bondage to sin, to suffering, to the body, to mortality, to time, to the need to keep performing rituals. One passage on the liberating power of knowledge has puzzled interpreters from Sankara to modern scholars: If one has been able to know it here, before the break-up of the body, then, in the creations, in the worlds, he is fit for embodiment. Though the Upanisads, especially the early ones, sometimes talk at great length in the manner of the Brahmanas, they also emphasize that the knowledge that leads to liberation cannot be expressed in words.
