The Philosophy of the Upanishads c9.s3.t2.14

c9.s3.t2.14

Only prāṇa and vāyu do not become exhausted; accordingly the others take refuge in them, and at the close it is said that the sun rises and sets in the (cosmical) prāṇa. A similar conception lies at the foundation of the magnifying of the wind in Bṛh. 3. 3. 2:—"The wind therefore is the particular (uyashti), and the universal (samashti)." In another version of the same narrative, Bṛh. 3. 7, the wind (cosmical and psychical) is celebrated as the thread of the universe (sūtram) which holds together all beings:—"By the wind as thread, O Gautama, this world and the other world and all creatures are bound together. For this very reason, O Gautama, it is said of a dead man, 'his limbs have been relaxed'; for by the wind as thread, O Gautama, were they bound together."¹ Just as the prāṇa binds things together from without, so, as is explained in the following words of Bṛh. 3. 7. 3-23, the Antaryāmin (inner guide), i.e. the ātman, rules them from within. The connecting together prāṇa and antaryāmin is part of the attempt, thus early made, to advance from the symbolical method to that of abstract conception, of which more will later be said.