The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c8.s6.t2.4

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.