16. It runs with irresistible course to many a lake and brook as its home, it flows in the currents of rivers, unless it is stopped by some bridge or embankment.
17. The waters of the sea like ignorant men on earth, ran up and down in search of the proper course; but failing to find the same, they tumbled and turned about in eddies and whirlpools (of doubts).
18. I saw the water on the mountain-top, which thought it rested on high, yet it fell owing to its restlessness in the form of a water-fall in the cataract, where it was dashed to a thousand splashes. (So I found myself to be hurled down by my sins, from my high position in heaven, to a thousand devious paths on earth).
19. I saw the water rising from the earth in the form of vapour on high, and then mixing with the blue ocean of the azure sky, or appearing as blue sapphires among the twinkling stars of heaven.
20. I saw the waters ascending and riding on the back of the clouds, and there joining with the lightnings as their hidden consorts, shining as the cerulean god Vishnu, mounted on the back of the hoary serpent—Vásuki.
21. I found this water both in the atomic and elementary creations, as well as in all gross bodies on earth, and I found it lying unperceived in the very grain of all things, as the omnipresent Brahma inheres in all substances.
22. This element resides in the tongue; which perceives the flavour of things from their particles, and conveys the sense to the mind. Hence I ween the feeling of taste relates to the soul and its perception, and not to the sensibility of the body. (The Divine Spirit is said to be flavour—rasovaitat, and it is the human soul only that perceives it).
23. I did not taste this spiritual savour, by means of the body or any of its organs; it is felt in the inner soul only, and not by the perceptions of the mind, which are misleading and therefore false and unreal.
24. There is this flavour scattered on all sides, in the sapidity of the season’s fruits and flowers; I have tasted them all and left the flowers to be sucked by the bees and butterflies.
25. Again the sentient soul abides in the form of this liquid, in the bodies and limbs of all the fourteen kinds of living bodies (in some of which it appears in the form of red hot blood).