The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c5.s2.t2.4

c5.s2.t2.4

²⁹ By this the objective, *e. g.*, the body, is sometimes treated as subject, sometimes as a quality of it. As explanation the following passage may serve, p. 20, 8: “As one is accustomed, when it goes ill or well with his “son or wife and the like, to say, ‘it goes ill or well with me,’ and thus “transfers the qualities of outer things to the Self (soul, *âtman*) [cf. p. 689, “3 ff.], in just the same way he transfers the qualities of the body, when “he says: ‘I am fat, I am thin, I am white, I stand, I go, I leap,’ and “similarly the qualities of the sense organs when he says: ‘I am dumb, “impotent, deaf, one-eyed, blind,’ and similarly the qualities of the inner “organ [*antaḥkaraṇam* = *manas*, cf. 2, 3, 32], desire, wish, doubt, resolution “and the like;—thus also he transfers the subject presenting the ‘I’ “(*aham-pratyayin*) to the inner soul, present solely as witness (*sākshin*) “of the personal tendencies, and conversely the witness of all, the inner “soul, to the inner organ and the rest” [that is, to the sense organs, the body and the objects of the outer world].