57. The goddess replied:—It is the law appointed by the author of life from the first, that such and such pains are to fall to the lot of living beings at such and such times. (Man’s primeval sin brought pain and disease and death into the world). 58. The primeval sin springs of itself as a plant in the conscious heart of man, and subjects him to his doomed miseries, which have no other intelligible cause. (There is no other assignable cause of death and disease except the original guilt). 59. When the disease and its pain overpower the body, and prevent the lungs and arteries to expand and contract, in order to inhale and exhale the air, it loses its equipoise (samána) and becomes restless. 60. When the inhaled air does not come out, nor the exhaled breath re-enter the lungs, all pulsation is at a stop; and the organic sensations are lost in their remembrance only. (As in the memory of sleeping and dreaming men). 61. When there is no ingress nor egress of the vital air, the pulse sinks and becomes motionless, and the body is said to become senseless, and the life to be extinct. 62. I shall also die away in my destined time, but my consciousness of former knowledge will all be awake at the hour of death (which proves the immortality of the soul). 63. Though I am dead and gone from here in this manner, yet I must mind, that the seed of my innate consciousness (the soul), is never destroyed with my life and body. 64. Consciousness is inward knowledge and imperishable in its nature; therefore the nature of consciousness is free from birth and death. (The body is subject to birth and death, but not the soul). 65. This consciousness is as clear as a fresh fountain in some persons, and as foul as tide water in others; it is bright in its form of the pure intellect—_chit_ in some, and polluted with the passions of animal life, in its nature of the sentient or living soul—_chetana_ in many. 66. As a blade of grass is composed of joints in the midst, so is the even nature of the sentient or living soul; which is combined with the two states of birth and death amidst it. 67. The sentient soul is neither born nor dead at any time; but witnesses these two states as the passing shadows and apparitions in a dream and vision. 68. The soul is no other than the intellect, which is never destroyed anywhere by any. Say, what other thing is this soul, which is called the _Purusha_ beside the intellect itself. Gloss. It is not the body, nor the vital breath, nor perceptions nor mind; it is not the understanding nor egoism, nor the heart nor illusion, all of which are inactive of themselves. 69. Say then whom and what you call to be dead today, and whether the intellect is liable to disease or demise at any time and in any wise. Millions of living bodies are verily dying every day, but the intellect ever remains imperishable.