case only there exists a continuity of topic.  On any other supposition the second passage would contain a statement about something not connected with the general topic, and would therefore be entirely uncalled for.—­But, it may be objected, on your interpretation also the second passage makes an uncalled-for statement, viz. in so far as it represents the individual soul as separate from the Lord.—­Not so, we reply.  It is nowhere the purpose of Scripture to make statements regarding the individual soul.  From ordinary experience the individual soul, which in the different individual bodies is joined to the internal organs and other limiting adjuncts, is known to every one as agent and enjoyer, and we therefore must not assume that it is that which Scripture aims at setting forth.  The Lord, on the other hand, about whom ordinary experience tells us nothing, is to be considered as the special topic of all scriptural passages, and we therefore cannot assume that any passage should refer to him merely casually[170].—­That the mantra ‘two birds,’ &c. speaks of the Lord—­and the individual soul we have already shown under I, 2, 11.—­And if, according to the interpretation given in the Pai@ngi-upanishad (and quoted under I, 2, 11), the verse is understood to refer to the internal organ (sattva) and the individual soul (not to the individual soul and the Lord), even then there is no contradiction (between that interpretation and our present averment that the individual soul is not the abode of heaven and earth).—­How so?—­Here (i.e. in the present Sutra and the Sutras immediately preceding) it is denied that the individual soul which, owing to its imagined connexion with the internal organ and other limiting adjuncts, has a separate existence in separate bodies—­its division being analogous to the division of universal space into limited spaces such as the spaces within jars and the like—­is that which is called the abode of heaven and earth.  That same soul, on the other hand, which exists in all bodies, if considered apart from the limiting adjuncts, is nothing else but the highest Self.  Just as the spaces within jars, if considered apart from their limiting conditions, are merged in universal space, so the individual soul also is incontestably that which is denoted as the abode of heaven and earth, since it (the soul) cannot really be separate from the highest Self.  That it is not the abode of heaven and earth, is therefore said of the individual soul in so far only as it imagines itself to be connected with the internal organ and so on.  Hence it follows that the highest Self is the abode of heaven, earth, and so on.—­The same conclusion has already been arrived at under I, 2, 21; for in the passage concerning the source of all beings (which passage is discussed under the Sutra quoted) we meet with the clause, ’In which heaven and earth and the sky are woven.’  In the present adhikara/n/a the subject is resumed for the sake of further elucidation.