[4][10] The Upanishad is notable for glorifying the feminine as the Shakti (energy, power) and as the metaphysical Brahman principle, and extensively uses a combination of Bhakti and Vedanta terminology.
[19] This link had been a basis for dating this text to be from the 1st-millennium, by Maurice Winternitz and Louis Renou, because they credited the 8th-century Adi Shankara to have composed Balabodhani, which some scholars such as Windischmann considered to have been also titled as Vakyasudha and Drigdrishya Viveka.
[19] However, 20th-century scholarship doubts that Shankara was the actual author of several secondary works attributed to him, and thus it is unclear if Vakyasudha or this Upanishadic text existed before 8th-century CE.
The first is structured in the style of litany hymns found in the Rigveda to Devi (goddess Sarasvati), the second part is in the Shloka (metered verse) format.
[28] She is called the goddess of wisdom, radiant, resplendent in white, who manifests as syllables, words, sentences, meaning and understanding, thereby purifying and enriching the soul of man.
[33] The theme of these verses, states Dhavamony, is that "Brahman, the Absolute, is the ultimate ground of the objective world, and the innermost self (soul) of the subjective consciousness structure of man".
[35] Sarasvati: You are me My consciousness shines in your world, like a beautiful face in a soiled mirror, Seeing that reflection, I call myself you, an individual soul, as if I could be finite!
The text, after its ontological discussion, presents six methods of Dharana-Samadhi (concentration-union),[6] and meditation is a means to self-knowledge and the realization of the Goddess within oneself as self-luminous, free from duality and endowed with "Being, Consciousness and Bliss".
Dualism is speculation and false, asserts the text in its closing verses, and the realization of oneness of the individual soul and goddess Saravati is Mukti (freedom, liberation).