He appeared as if he had fallen into a deep, dark pit, wedged tightly between unyielding rocks. His tongue grew heavy and sluggish, as if it had paralyzed itself, while his mind felt torn apart, scattered in confusion. It was as though he were falling from the very path of the sky, caught in a swirling whirlpool, riding a chariot that sped uncontrollably toward the gaping mouth of the Himalayas. He seemed to spin the world itself, making it glow with light, as if he were touching the very heart of fire. Whirled about by an unseen force, he stood helpless, like a machine driven by the wind. Tossed about like a mirage, pulled as if by an invisible rope, he revolved endlessly, as if trapped in a device of sharp blades. He was driven like a single blade of grass before the mighty winds of the ocean, carried far away by the floodwaters, and cast down as though into a fire raging beneath the sea. It was as if he were falling forever through the endless sky, plunging into a bottomless abyss, spinning in the swirl of a great wheel. Even the mountains and the earth seemed to reverse their places, and yet he remained, enduring the turmoil. He seemed to be falling without end, or leaping up in all directions at once, startled by the roar of tumultuous sound, with every sense heightened to its limit. Gradually, all his perceptions dimmed, their meaning fading into darkness, just as the directions lose their clarity when the sun sets. His memory, grown weak and thin, could no longer distinguish before from after, just as, at the end of twilight, vision is lost in all eight directions. Bewildered, he lost the power of imagination; without discernment, he sank into a vast delusion. When this delusion took hold, even the breath could not, and when the breath no longer moved as it does in life, delusion fully enveloped him. Thus, by mutual reinforcement—when perception was confused by delusion—the living being became insensible, like a stone, as if this were its original nature. Why does this body, even when all its limbs are intact, experience pain, delusion, fainting, confusion, disease, and insensibility? This is the activity known as karma, the primal vibration at the beginning of creation. If there is suffering at this time, it endures only for that duration. It is like a cluster of branches swaying in the wind—this is its own nature, arising from the expansion of consciousness, with no other cause. When, because of pain, the channels of the body abandon their natural rhythm of contraction and expansion, the vital airs leave the body and return to their own state. When the vital airs have entered but do not exit, or have exited but do not enter, when they cease to move through the channels, then death occurs due to this cessation. When the air neither enters nor exits, because the body’s channels are impaired, the person is said to be dead. The awareness, “I must perish at this time,”—this knowledge, previously understood, proceeds toward that death when so impelled. Yet the awareness that arose at the beginning of creation—“I must act thus, in this way”—never proceeds to the destruction of the seed-form of consciousness. The very nature of consciousness is perception, which is inseparable from itself. Therefore, apart from the nature of consciousness, there is nothing else in birth or death. Sometimes, there is turbulence, like a whirlpool; at other times, calmness, like smooth water in a river; at times, gentleness—so too is this living consciousness. Just as the joints of a long creeper are found along its length, so too are births and deaths in the continuity of conscious existence. Consciousness, the true person, is never born nor does it die; it merely perceives this illusion, like the confusion in a dream. The person is nothing but pure consciousness—when and where could it ever perish? And what else could a person be, apart from consciousness? Tell me, from when until now, whose consciousness has died, what, and how? Countless bodies die, but consciousness remains undiminished. If the mind were to die in just one being, then with the death of that one, all would have died here. The diversity of mere tendencies is what the living being experiences for itself; for that alone, birth and death are designated by name. Thus, nothing is truly born nor does anyone truly die; the living being merely tumbles in the whirlpool of tendencies. Because these appearances are utterly impossible in reality, that tendency is destroyed through firm knowledge by reasoning, “it does not exist.” Having thoroughly observed the rise and fall of the world-process, with all its miseries born of the fear of existence, let it be established as truth: the living being whose tendencies have not arisen is indeed liberated. Now, just as this creature dies and is born again, the question arises: how does this happen, O goddess of the gods, so that my understanding may grow further? When, in the flow of the channels, the creature attains a state of disorder due to wind, then its consciousness appears to subside. Yet pure consciousness is eternal; it neither arises nor subsides, abiding in the immobile and the moving, in the sky, the mountain, the fire, and the wind. When all movement ceases solely due to the restraint of the vital air, the body is said to be dead, and at that time, it is called inert. When the body has become a corpse and the vital air has merged into space, the consciousness endowed with impressions—the sky-like self—remains right there. That which possesses impressions and is subtle is called the “jīva”; it remains there itself, whether in the cremation ground or in the sky. Therefore, in common usage, it is referred to as “preta”; this consciousness, mixed with impressions, abides like fragrant air. When it abandons all this and exists in another vision, then it takes on various forms, like a dream or a thought. In that very place, within, it becomes endowed with memory as before; at the end of death or fainting, it perceives another body.