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Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣadबृहदारण्यक उपनिषद्

Yajnavalkya Kanda. Adhyaya 4, Brahmana 3. The self-luminous Self: waking, dream, and the light of man

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Each mantra is given four ways: the Sanskrit in its Devanagari script, the same sounds in Roman letters, an English translation set in our own voice, and then the line once more in plain words, for a first and unhurried reading.

Not every passage is opened to the same depth. A few central mantras carry the full cross-school commentary, where the schools are set side by side. The rest are kept here whole and faithful, set in their place but not expounded, so the book stays entire and nothing is dropped for being thought minor.

Where the schools read a line differently, the difference is kept open. None is crowned and none is corrected. Each is met on its own terms, and where they contradict, the contradiction is left standing for you to sit with.

॥ 4.3.36 ॥

The fruit loosed from the stalk

स यत्रायमणिमानं न्येति जरया वोपतपता वाणिमानं निगच्छति । तद्यथाम्रं वोदुम्बरं वा पिप्पलं वा बन्धनात्प्रमुच्यते । एवमेवायं पुरुष एभ्योऽङ्गेभ्यः संप्रमुच्य पुनः प्रतिन्यायं प्रतियोन्याद्रवति प्राणायैव ॥
In transliteration
sa yatrāyamaṇimānaṃ nyeti jarayā vopatapatā vāṇimānaṃ nigacchati | tadyathāmraṃ vodumbaraṃ vā pippalaṃ vā bandhanātpramucyate | evamevāyaṃ puruṣa ebhyo'ṅgebhyaḥ saṃpramucya punaḥ pratinyāyaṃ pratiyonyādravati prāṇāyaiva ||

In English

And when this body grows thin, wasting away through old age or illness, then, just as a mango or a fig or a peepal fruit is loosed from its stalk, so this person, loosing himself from these limbs, hastens back again, by the reverse path, toward the vital force itself.

In plain words

When the body becomes worn and thin, whether through old age or through disease, then, as a mango or fig or peepal fruit is freed from its stem, the self detaches from the body's limbs and returns, by the same route it came, to take its stand once more in the vital force (prana), ready to move toward a new body.