Kausalya-Pippalada-Samvada

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(Prasna Upanishad)

 

Kausalya, son of Asvala, questioned Pippalada: " O Bhagavan Pippalada:

Whence is this Prana born? How does it come into this body? How does

it abide after it has divided itself? How does it go out? How does it

support what is without? How does it support all within the body? "

 

He replied: " You ask questions about transcendental matters. I will

explain to thee because you are a great enquirer of Brahman.

 

This Prana is born of the Atman. As is this shadow in the man, so is

this Prana in the Atman. By the action of the mind this enters into

this body.

 

As a king commands his officers, saying to them: 'Govern these or

those villages', so does this Prana dispose the other Pranas, each

for their separate allotted work.

 

The Apana dwells in the organs of excretion and generation: the Prana

itself abides in the eye, ear, mouth and nose. In the middle is

Samana. It distributes the food supplied equally and the seven flames

proceed from it.

 

This Atman is in the heart. Here there are a hundred and one nerves

(arteries). Each of them has a hundred branches; again every one of

these has seventy-two thousand sub-branches. In these the Vyana

moves.

 

Again, through one other, the Udana ascending, leads us upwards to

the virtuous world by good work; to sinful worlds by sin: and to the

world of men by virtue and sin combined.

 

The sun verily is the external Prana. He rises and assists the Prana

in the eye. The goddess of the earth attracts Apana downwards. The

other (between the sun and the earth) is Samana. The wind is Vyana.

 

The external fire indeed is Udana. Therefore, he whose fire has gone

out, enters another body with his senses absorbed in the mind.

 

Whatever his thought (at the time of death), with that he attains

Prana: and the Prana united with Udana together with the Jivatma,

leads on to the world thought of. The learned man who knows Prana

thus-his offspring does not perish and he becomes immortal.

 

He who knows the origin, the entry, the seat, the fivefold

distribution of Prana and its internal state in the body, obtains

immortality, yea, obtains immortality " .

 

(Source: Essence of Yoga by Sri Swami Sivananda)