Those who understand the sacrifice understand the Samâna and the Vyâna as the principal (offering). The Prâna and Apâna are portions of the offering, ... and between them is the fire. That is the excellent seat of the Udâna as understood by Brâhmanas. As to that which is distinct from these pairs, hear me speak about that. Day and night are a pair, between them is the fire.... That which exists and that which does not exist are a pair, between them is the fire....[1344]
And after every such contrast Nârada adds:
That is the excellent seat of the Udâna as understood by Brâhmanas.
Now many people do not know the full meaning of the statement that Samâna and Vyâna, Prâna and Apâna—which are explained to be “life-winds,” but which we say are principles and their respective faculties and senses—are offered up to Udâna, the soi-disant principal “life-wind,” which is said to act at all the joints. And so the reader who is ignorant that the word “Fire” in these allegories means both the “Self” and the higher Divine Knowledge, will understand nothing in this, and will entirely miss the point of our argument, as the translator and even the editor, the great Oxford Sanskritist, F. Max Müller, have missed the true meaning of Nârada's words. Exoterically, this enumeration of “life-winds” has, of course, the meaning, approximately, which is surmised in the foot-notes, namely:
The sense appears to be this: The course of worldly life is due to the operations of the life-winds which are attached to the self and lead to its manifestations as individual souls [?]. Of these, the Samâna and Vyâna are controlled and held under check by the Prâna and Apâna.... The latter two are held in check and controlled by the Udâna, which thus controls all. And the control of this, which is the control of all five, ... leads to the supreme self.[1345]
The above is given as an explanation of the text, which records the words of the Brâhmana, who narrates how he reached the ultimate Wisdom of Yogism, and in this wise reached All-knowledge. Saying [pg 600] that he had “perceived by means of the self the seat abiding in the self,”[1346] where dwells the Brahma free from all; and explaining that that indestructible principle was entirely beyond the perception of senses—i.e., of the five “life-winds”—he adds that:
In the midst of all these (life-winds) which move about in the body and swallow up one another, blazes the Vaishvânara fire sevenfold.[1347]
This “Fire,” according to Nîlakantha's commentary, is identical with the “I,” the Self, which is the goal of the ascetic; Vaishvânara being a word often used for the Self. Then the Brâhmana goes on to enumerate that which is meant by the word “sevenfold,” and says:
The nose [or smell], and the tongue [taste], and the eye, and the skin, and the ear as the fifth, the mind, and the understanding, these are the seven tongues of the blaze of Vaishvânara.[1348]... Those are the seven (kinds of) fuel for me.[1349]... These are the seven great officiating priests.[1350]
These seven priests are accepted by Arjuna Mishra in the sense of meaning “the soul distinguished as so many [souls, or principles] with reference to these several powers”; and, finally, the translator seems to accept the explanation, and reluctantly admits that “they may mean” this; though he himself takes the sense to mean: