as Brahman is the Self of
everything, qualities such as consisting of mind and the like, which
belong to the individual soul, belong to Brahman also. Accordingly
/S/ruti and Sm/ri/ti say of Brahman, 'Thou art woman, thou art man; thou
art youth, thou art maiden; thou as an old man totterest along on thy
staff; thou art born with thy face turned everywhere' (/S/ve. Up. IV,
3), and 'its hands and feet are everywhere, its eyes and head are
everywhere, its ears are everywhere, it stands encompassing all in the
world' (Bha. Gita III, 13).

The passage (quoted above against our view), 'Without breath, without
mind, pure,' refers to the pure (unrelated) Brahman. The terms
'consisting of mind; having breath for its body,' on the other hand,
refer to Brahman as distinguished by qualities. Hence, as the qualities
mentioned are possible in Brahman, we conclude that the highest Brahman
only is represented as the object of meditation.

3. On the other hand, as (those qualities) are not possible (in it), the
embodied (soul is) not (denoted by manomaya, &c.).

The preceding Sutra has declared that the qualities mentioned are
possible in Brahman; the present Sutra states that they are not possible
in the embodied Self. Brahman only possesses, in the manner explained,
the qualities of consisting of mind, and so on; not the embodied
individual soul. For qualities such as expressed in the words, 'He whose
purposes are true, whose Self is the ether, who has no speech, who is
not disturbed, who is greater than the earth,' cannot easily be
attributed to the embodied Self. By the term 'embodied' (/s/arira) we
have to understand 'residing' in a body. If it be objected that the Lord
also resides in the body[139], we reply, True, he does reside in the
body, but not in the body only; for /s/ruti declares him to be
all-pervading; compare, 'He is greater than the earth; greater than the
atmosphere, omnipresent like the ether, eternal.' The individual soul,
on the other hand, is in the body only, apart from which as the abode of
fruition it does not exist.

4. And because there is a (separate) denotation of the object of
activity and of the agent.

The attributes of consisting of mind, and so on, cannot belong to the
embodied Self for that reason also, that there is a (separate)
denotation of the object of activity and of the agent. In the passage,
'When I shall have departed from hence I shall obtain him' (Ch. Up. III,
14, 4), the word 'him'