12.206
The teacher said.
O best of men, delusion arises from rajas and tamas; anger, greed, fear, and arrogance—purity is attained by overcoming the causes of these.
They enter Viṣṇu, the Supreme Self, the imperishable and unchanging divine being, whose abode is the unmanifest, the best among the gods.
Those whose limbs are deceived by illusion, who have fallen from knowledge and are devoid of blessings, humans, due to the delusion of knowledge, thereafter indeed pursue desire.
Humans, driven by desire, acquire anger, then greed and delusion; from pride and arrogance arises ego, and from ego, actions follow.
Affectionate bonds arise from actions; from affection comes immediate sorrow; from the beginning of happiness and sorrow, the cycle of birth after birth is determined by those moments.
From birth, the body resides in the womb, but it is formed from semen and blood, and is moistened by feces and urine, arising from blood, and is impure.
One who is overpowered by desire, bound and tossed about by it, should recognize women as the driving force in the mechanism of worldly existence.
By their nature, those men are identified with the field and possess the characteristics of the knower of the field. Therefore, among these, the wise man distinctly surpasses the others.
These witches, of terrible form, indeed bewilder the undiscerning; hidden within passion, they are the eternal form of the senses.
Therefore, creatures are born from thirst, attachment, and seed. Just as worms born in one's own body and possessing one's own consciousness should be abandoned from the limb, so too, worms possessing one's own or son's consciousness should be abandoned in the same way.
Creatures are born from semen, essence, and unctuousness, or from their own nature or the conjunction of actions; the wise should disregard them.
When passion is overpowered by darkness and goodness is established in darkness, ignorance becomes the seat of knowledge, characterized by intellect and ego.
They say that the seed of embodied beings is called the jīva; by actions, combined with time, it causes the cycle of rebirth.
Just as this one delights in a dream by the mind as if having a body, so too the embodied soul, endowed with the wombs of actions and qualities, is born in the womb.
Whatever sense organ is impelled by action, which is the seed, that arises from ego, by a mind endowed with attachment.
For one whose mind is cultivated, the ear arises from attachment to sound; similarly, the eye from attachment to form, and the nose from the desire to perceive smell.
Thus, from the organs of touch, air (vāyu), supported by prāṇa and apāna, along with vyāna, udāna, and samāna, in five forms, sustain the body.
A man, enveloped by Brahman, is born with limbs produced by actions; he is surrounded by physical and mental sufferings whose beginning, middle, and end are suffering.
One should understand that suffering increases due to attachment and ego; by renouncing these, cessation is attained, and the one who knows cessation is liberated.
Just as the senses have both their origin and dissolution in impurity (rajas), so too, having examined this, the wise person should act properly, guided by the eye of scripture.
The sense organs of knowledge do not move toward sense objects in one who is free from desire; and the embodied soul, through the known causes, does not take on a body again.
