or Self.

An objection is raised against the assertion that pra/n/a denotes
Brahman. The word pra/n/a, it is said, does not denote the highest
Brahman, because the speaker designates himself. The speaker, who is a
certain powerful god called Indra, at first says, in order to reveal
himself to Pratardana, 'Know me only,' and later on, 'I am pra/n/a, the
intelligent Self.' How, it is asked, can the pra/n/a, which this latter
passage, expressive of personality as it is, represents as the Self of
the speaker, be Brahman to which, as we know from Scripture, the
attribute of being a speaker cannot be ascribed; compare, for instance,
B/ri/. Up. III, 8, 8, 'It is without speech, without mind.' Further on,
also, the speaker, i.e. Indra, glorifies himself by enumerating a number
of attributes, all of which depend on personal existence and can in no
way belong to Brahman, 'I slew the three-headed son of Tvash/tri/; I
delivered the Arunmukhas, the devotees, to the wolves,' and so on. Indra
may be called pra/n/a on account of his strength. Scripture says,
'Strength indeed is pra/n/a,' and Indra is known as the god of strength;
and of any deed of strength people say, 'It is Indra's work.' The
personal Self of a deity may, moreover, be called an intelligent Self;
for the gods, people say, possess unobstructed knowledge. It thus being
a settled matter that some passages convey information about the
personal Self of some deity, the other passages also--as, for instance,
the one about what is most beneficial for man--must be interpreted as
well as they may with reference to the same deity. Hence pra/n/a does
not denote Brahman.

This objection we refute by the remark that in that chapter there are
found a multitude of references to the interior Self. For the passage,
'As long as pra/n/a dwells in this body so long surely there is life,'
declares that that pra/n/a only which is the intelligent interior
Self--and not some particular outward deity--has power to bestow and to
take back life. And where the text speaks of the eminence of the
pra/n/as as founded on the existence of the pra/n/a, it shows that that
pra/n/a is meant which has reference to the Self and is the abode of the
sense-organs.[129]

Of the same tendency is the passage, 'Pra/n/a, the intelligent Self,
alone having laid hold of this body makes it rise up;' and the passage
(which occurs in the passus, 'Let no man try to find out what speech
is,' &c.), 'For as in a car the