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The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c8.s6.t2: 2. Origin and Nature of the Organs of Life (prāṇa)

The System of the Vedânta according to Bâdarâyana's Brahma-Sûtras and Çankara's Commentary c8.s6.t2

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2. Origin and Nature of the Organs of Life (prāṇa)

c8.s6.t2.1

By organs of life (Prāṇas in the more extended sense) are to be understood in the present case: the five organs of action, the five senses, the Manas and the Mukhya Prāṇa with its five branches.

c8.s6.t2.2

Though this apparatus appears in strict and (except in liberation) inseparable connection with the soul, it does not belong to it all the same but to another non-spiritual part of nature. In the drama of world-development it does not belong to the player but the scenery; it is therefore in a similar position to the elements (earth, water, fire, air, ether) and appears in close connection with them; and if the metaphor is carried further one might say: the elements form the scenery (stage and wings) and the organs of life the costumes which the actors put on. For the rest, the idea of the Prāṇas is not clearly worked out; on the one hand they are the inseparable companions of the soul on its wanderings and therefore parcelled out individuals, on the other hand, as in what follows, they appear as a complex mass from which the soul draws its organs as it takes its body from the corresponding mass of the elements.

c8.s6.t2.3

The question as to the nature and origin of the Prāṇas is twice treated, 2, 3, 15 and 2, 4, 1—4 without our arriving at settled ideas in the matter; in the first passage (as we saw above chap. XVII, 3 p. 236) Çaṅkara is undecided whether the Prāṇas are to be regarded as of the same nature as, or as different from the elements; in the former case, he thinks, they must have originated (in the creation at the beginning of each Kalpa) at the same time as the elements, in the latter before and after them; at any rate it is certain, he says, that they, like the elements, have arisen from Brahman. — The verbose treatment which he deals out to our question in the others passage, 2, 4, 1—4, does not bring us much further, for the essential content of his explanation is limited to the following: the question is whether the Prāṇas had an origin or not (p. 701, 6), for passages can be cited in support of both assumptions (p. 701, 7. 702, 1); one may not however therefore take the origin of the Prāṇas in a figurative (*gauṇa*) sense (p. 702, 7); on the contrary they are sprung from Brahman just as much as the rest of the world (p. 703, 11), for the Scripture teaches this expressly (p. 704, 7). If on the other hand the Scripture (Çatapathabr. 6, 1, 1, 1) makes them exist before the origin [of the world], they are for all that not absolutely primordial in their nature (*mūla-prakṛiti*) but only relatively so (*avāntara-prakṛiti*) viz. with respect to what has originated in its turn from them (p. 706, 6). Whether their origin from the elements as taught Chānd. 6, 6, 5 (above p. 263) is to be taken literally or figuratively (p. 708, 5), it follows in any case from it that they like all else have arisen from Brahman (p. 708, 9).

c8.s6.t2.4

But this is in no way a satisfactory settlement of the question. For the Prāṇas exist, like the subtle body which carries them, as long as Saṃsāra endures (p. 1096, 11), and they accompany the soul inseparably even if it should enter a plant (p. 1096, 14), in which case Manas and Indriyas naturally cannot unfold themselves; now Saṃsāra exists, as we have seen many times already, from eternity; therefore the soul must have been equipped with the psychic organism of the Prāṇas from eternity too. Our author is everywhere only concerned to reconcile this eternal existence of the individual soul and its psychic apparatus with the entering into and origin from Brahman, taught by the Scripture of all that exists; this he does by making the soul continue in Brahman in the form of seed (*vīja-ātmanā*) or potentially (*çakti-ātmanā*) which makes its destruction and origin merely apparent;—but these Vedic apologetics have far less interest for us than the question as to the relation between the eyes and ears, hands and feet, etc., which wander forth with the soul and exist for ever, and the material parts of the body which bear these names and originate and perish with the body.—Çankara gives a hint to guide us in solving the question when he, as we shall see, declares repeatedly that the function (*vritti*), not the organ wanders forth with the soul; that therefore even when the organs of sight, hearing, moving and grasping perish at death, the capability (we might say the will) to see, hear, move and grasp, etc. persists with the soul (cf. the passage from Chând. above p. 185 ff.). We find no further information, but a solution of the question in conformity with the system is not lacking. In this matter we must regard as fundamental the view that the body is related to the psychic complex as the developed plant to its seed. Since everything originates only from its seed, the wandering soul must necessarily, besides the Prânas, take with it the seed of the gross body in the form of the "subtle body" which we shall examine more closely in the section on transmigration. As the material body is the bearer of the material sense-organs, so this subtle body is the bearer (*âçraya*) of the psychic organs. They must like the body be conceived as germs which, on entering into material existence, by drawing homogeneous corpuscules from the whole mass of Prâna-materials, develop into material organs, just as the seed of the subtle body absorbs the materials of the elements and ripens into the gross body.

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