Above it is that for the food which is taken. In the
navel are all the forces of life that sustain the body. Urged by the ten
kinds of breaths having Prana for their first, the ducts (already
mentioned), branching out from the heart, convey the liquid juices that
food yields, upwards, downwards, and in transverse directions.[559] The
main duct leading from the mouth to the anus is the path by which yogins,
vanquishers of fatigue, of perfect equanimity in joy and sorrow, and
possessed of great patience, succeed in attaining to Brahma by holding
the soul within the brain.[560] Even thus is heat panted in the breaths
called Prana and Apana and others, of all embodied creatures. That heat
is always burning there like a fire placed in any (visible) vessel.'
SECTION CLXXXVI
"Bharadwaja said, 'If it is the wind that keeps us alive, if it is the
wind that causes us to move and exert, if it is the wind that causes us
to breathe and to speak, then it seems that life is worth little. If the
animal heat (that digests all food) be of the nature of fire, and if it
is that fire which assists at digestion by dissolving the food we take,
then life is worth little. When an animal dies, that which is called its
life is never seen leaving it. Only the breath leaves it, and the
internal heat becomes extinguished. If life were nothing else, than wind,
or if life depended only on the wind, then it could have been seen like
the external sea of air, and when passing out it would have mingled with
that air.
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