The Philosophy of the Upanishads c9.s3.t2.16

c9.s3.t2.16

Since it has been already shown in Ait. Br. 8. 28 in the brahmaṇaḥ parimaraḥ, the "dying (of the foes) around the magic spell (uttered by the king)," how the natural phenomena, lightning, rain, sun, moon, and fire, become extinct in the wind and emerge from it again, Kaush. 2. 12-13 proceeds to teach the daivaḥ parimaraḥ, the "dying of the gods around (the prāṇa)." The cosmical divinities (fire, sun, moon, lightning), and the corresponding psychical divinities (speech, eye, ear, manas) do not die, when their brahman (here, their phenomenal form) vanishes; their brightness only they deliver over to other gods, while they themselves with their prāṇa enter, the cosmical into vāyu, the psychical into prāṇa, which in essence are one :—" All these divinities therefore enter into the prâṇa, and die in the prâṇa ; they are not, however, lost when they enter in, but arise again from him." Here *vâyu-prâṇa* appears as the true first principle of the universe, while the "brahman" is to be interpreted as only its manifestation in natural phenomena, and therefore is apparently subordinated to the prâṇa.