A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c5.11

c5.11

**10. Prana.** When we come to the conception of Prāna as the φύσις of things, we rise to a higher conception than was reached in Greek philosophy. Prāna originally meant breath; and as breath seemed to constitute the life of man, Prāna came to signify the life-principle; and just as the life-principle in man came to be called Prāna, similarly the life-principle in the universe came also to be designated Prāna. By Prāna is thus meant either life-force or cosmic-force. When Ushasti Chākrāyana was asked in the Chhāndogyopanishad what might be regarded as the ultimate substratum of all things, he said it was Prāna: for “verily it is into Prāṇa that all these beings enter and it is from Prāṇa that they originally spring" (S. 11. a). Of the same import is the doctrine of Raikva in the Chhāndogyopanishad when he tries to bring out a correspondence between the macrocosm and the microcosm, and when he says that just as air is the life-principle of the universe—a theory which we have already noticed—similarly breath is the life-principle in man. "Prāṇa is verily the final absorbent; for when man sleeps, his speech is reduced into Prāṇa, his eye and his ear and his mind are all absorbed in Prāṇa. It is Prāṇa which is the final absorbent of all these things" (S. 11. b). "We may thus say," says Raikva," that there are these two absorbents; one in the macrocosm and the other in the microcosm, the one being Air, and the other being Prāṇa" (S. 11. c). Having recognised this supremacy of Prāṇa, the Chhāndogyopanishad, in the doctrine which Sanatkumāra imparts to Nārada, has no difficulty in maintaining that, "just as all the spokes of a wheel are centred in its navel, similarly all these beings, and in fact, everything that exists is centred in Prāṇa" (S. 12. a). Prāṇa may thus be regarded as the very navel of existence. The philosopher Kaushītaki tells us that "Prāṇa is the ultimate Reality, the mind being its messenger, the eye the protector, the ear the informant, and the speech the tire-woman. To this Prāṇa as the Ultimate Reality, all these beings make offerings, without Prāṇa having ever sought them" (S. 12. b). We thus see in a general way how Prāṇa comes to be recognised as superior to all the organs of sense in the human system.