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Third
Question
1. Then Kausalya Asvaiayana asked: 'Sir, whence is that
Prana (spirit) born? How does it come into this body?
And how does it abide, after it has divided itself?
How does it go out? How does it support what is without,
and how what is within?'
2.
He replied: 'You ask questions more difficult, but you
are very fond of Brahman, therefore I shall tell it
you.
3.
This Prana (spirit) is born of the Self. Like the shadow
thrown on a man, this (the prana) is spread out over
it (the Brahman). By the work of the mind does it come
into this body.
4.
As a king commands officials, saying to them: Rule these
villages or those, so does that Prana (spirit) dispose
the other pranas, each for their separate work.
5.
The Apana (the down-breathing) in the organs of excretion
and generation; the Prana himself dwells in eye and
ear, passing through mouth and nose. In the middle is
the Sarnana (the onbreathing); it carries what has been
sacrificed as food equally (over the body), and the
seven lights proceed from it.
6.
The Self is in the heart. There are the 101 arteries,
and in each of them there are a hundred (smaller veins),
and for each of these branches there are 72,000. In
these the Vyana (the backbreathing) moves.
7.
Through one of them, the Udana (the outbreathing) leads
(us) upwards to the good world by good work, to the
bad world by bad work, to the world of men by both.
8.
The sun rises as the external Prana, for it assists
the Prana in the eye. The deity that exists in the earth,
is there in support of man's Apana (down-breathing).
The ether between (sun and earth) is the Samana (on-breathing),
the air is Vyana (back-breathing).
9.
Light is the Udana (out-breathing), and therefore he
whose light has gone out comes to a new birth with his
senses absorbed in the mind.
10.
Whatever his thought (at the time of death) with that
he goes back to Prana, and the Prana, united with light,
together with the self (theovatma) leads on to the world,
as deserved.
11.
He who, thus knowing, knows Prana, his offspring does
not perish, and he becomes immortal. Thus says the Sloka:
12.
He who has known the origin, the entry, the place, the
fivefold distribution, and the internal state of the
Prana, obtains immortality, yes, obtains immortality.
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