8.  The bhuman (is Brahman), as the instruction about it is additional to that about the state of deep sleep (i.e. the vital air which remains awake even in the state of deep sleep).

We read (Ch.  Up.  VII, 23; 24), ’That which is much (bhuman) we must desire to understand.—­Sir, I desire to understand it.—­Where one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, understands nothing else, that is what is much (bhuman).  Where one sees something else, hears something else, understands something else, that is the Little.’—­Here the doubt arises whether that which is much is the vital air (pra/n/a) or the highest Self.—­Whence the doubt?—­The word ‘bhuman,’ taken by itself, means the state of being much, according to its derivation as taught by Pa/n/ani, VI, 4, 158.  Hence there is felt the want of a specification showing what constitutes the Self of that muchness.  Here there presents itself at first the approximate passage, ‘The vital air is more than hope’ (Ch.  Up.  VII, 15, 1), from which we may conclude that the vital air is bhuman.—­On the other hand, we meet at the beginning of the chapter, where the general topic is stated, with the following passage, ’I have heard from men like you that he who knows the Self overcomes grief.  I am in grief.  Do, Sir, help me over this grief of mine;’ from which passage it would appear that the bhuman is the highest Self.—­Hence there arises a doubt as to which of the two alternatives is to be embraced, and which is to be set aside.

The purvapakshin maintains that the bhuman is the vital air, since there is found no further series of questions and answers as to what is more.  For while we meet with a series of questions and answers (such as, ’Sir, is there something which is more than a name?’—­’Speech is more than name.’—­’Is there something which is more than speech?’—­’Mind is more than speech’), which extends from name up to vital air, we do not meet with a similar question and answer as to what might be more than vital air (such as, ’Is there something which is more than vital air?’—­’Such and such a thing is more than vital air’).  The text rather at first declares at length (in the passage, ‘The vital air is more than hope,’ &c.) that the vital air is more than all the members of the series from name up to hope; it then acknowledges him who knows the vital air to be an ativadin, i.e. one who makes a statement surpassing the preceding statements (in the passage, ’Thou art an ativadin.  He may say I am an ativadin; he need not deny it’); and it thereupon (in the passage, ’But he in reality is an ativadin who declares something beyond by means of the True’[171]),—­not leaving off, but rather continuing to refer to the quality of an ativadin which is founded on the vital air,—­proceeds, by means of the series beginning with the True, to lead over to the bhuman; so that we conclude the meaning to be that the vital air is the bhuman.—­But, if the bhuman is interpreted to mean the vital air, how have we to explain the