The purvapakshin maintains that the other, i.e. the lower Brahman, is referred to, because the text promises only a reward limited by a certain locality for him who knows it.  For, as the highest Brahman is omnipresent, it would be inappropriate to assume that he who knows it obtains a fruit limited by a certain locality.  The objection that, if the lower Brahman were understood, there would be no room for the qualification, ‘the highest person,’ is not valid, because the vital principal (pra/n/a) may be called ‘higher’ with reference to the body[175].

To this we make the following reply:  What is here taught as the object of meditation is the highest Brahman only.—­Why?—­On account of its being spoken of as the object of sight.  For the person to be meditated upon is, in a complementary passage, spoken of as the object of the act of seeing, ’He sees the person dwelling in the castle (of the body; purusham puri/s/ayam), higher than that one who is of the shape of the individual soul, and who is himself higher (than the senses and their objects).’  Now, of an act of meditation an unreal thing also can be the object, as, for instance, the merely imaginary object of a wish.  But of the act of seeing, real things only are the objects, as we know from experience; we therefore conclude, that in the passage last quoted, the highest (only real) Self which corresponds to the mental act of complete intuition[176] is spoken of as the object of sight.  This same highest Self we recognise in the passage under discussion as the object of meditation, in consequence of the term, ’the highest person.’—­But—­an objection will be raised—­as the object of meditation we have the highest person, and as the object of sight the person higher than that one who is himself higher, &c.; how, then, are we to know that those two are identical?—­The two passages, we reply, have in common the terms ‘highest’ (or ‘higher,’ para) and ‘person.’  And it must not by any means be supposed that the term jivaghana[177] refers to that highest person which, considered as the object of meditation, had previously been introduced as the general topic.  For the consequence of that supposition would be that that highest person which is the object of sight would be different from that highest person which is represented as the object of meditation.  We rather have to explain the word jivaghana as ’He whose shape[178] is characterised by the jivas;’ so that what is really meant by that term is that limited condition of the highest Self which is owing to its adjuncts, and manifests itself in the form of jivas, i.e. individual souls; a condition analogous to the limitation of salt (in general) by means of the mass of a particular lump of salt.  That limited condition of the Self may itself be called ‘higher,’ if viewed with regard to the senses and their objects.