er into which a living Self has entered, together with
their senses and bodies, merge and emerge by turns. And even if the word
'beings' were taken (not in the sense of animated beings, but) in the
sense of material elements in general, there would be nothing in the way
of interpreting the passage as referring to Brahman.--But, it may be
said, that the senses together with their objects do, during sleep,
enter into pra/n/a, and again issue from it at the time of waking, we
distinctly learn from another scriptural passage, viz. Kau. Up. III, 3,
'When a man being thus asleep sees no dream whatever, he becomes one
with that pra/n/a alone. Then speech goes to him with all names,'
&c.--True, we reply, but there also the word pra/n/a denotes (not the
vital air) but Brahman, as we conclude from characteristic marks of
Brahman being mentioned. The objection, again, that the word pra/n/a
cannot denote Brahman because it occurs in proximity to the words 'food'
and 'sun' (which do not refer to Brahman), is altogether baseless; for
proximity is of no avail against the force of the complementary passage
which intimates that pra/n/a is Brahman. That argument, finally, which
rests on the fact that the word pra/n/a commonly denotes the vital air
with its five modifications, is to be refuted in the same way as the
parallel argument which the purvapakshin brought forward with reference
to the word 'ether.' From all this it follows that the pra/n/a, which is
the deity of the prastava, is Brahman.

Some (commentators)[121] quote under the present Sutra the following
passages, 'the pra/n/a of pra/n/a' (B/ri/. Up. IV, 4, 18), and 'for to
pra/n/a mind is fastened' (Ch. Up. VI, 8, 2). But that is wrong since
these two passages offer no opportunity for any discussion, the former
on account of the separation of the words, the latter on account of the
general topic. When we meet with a phrase such as 'the father of the
father' we understand at once that the genitive denotes a father
different from the father denoted by the nominative. Analogously we
infer from the separation of words contained in the phrase, 'the breath
of breath,' that the 'breath of breath' is different from the ordinary
breath (denoted by the genitive 'of breath'). For one and the same thing
cannot, by means of a genitive, be predicated of--and thus distinguished
from--itself. Concerning the second passage we remark that, if the
matter constituting the general topic of some cha