The wish for an end to the ego, the hope to be eventually nothing, Gautama accepted for a truism as undeniably as the Brahmans did.

What he pronounced false was the Brahman prospectus of the way to reach this desirable impersonal state.

Their road, be said, could not possibly land the traveller where it professed, since it began wrong, and ended nowhere.

The way, he asserted, is within a man.

He has but to realize the truth, and from that moment he will see his goal and the road that leads there.