Verse 22

¹⁵That lotus of the worlds, shining with all the qualities, Visnu himself entered; and within it the Ordainer, who is made of the Veda, came to be, he whom they call the self-born. ¹⁶Seated on the pericarp of that lotus and seeing no world at all, turning about in the sky with rolling eyes, he came to have four faces, one towards each quarter. ¹⁷Resting on that lotus grown out of the water, whose circling waves the wind at the age's end had stirred, the first of gods did not directly know the truth of the world, nor his own self. ¹⁸Who is this that I am, here on the back of the lotus? And from what is this lotus, standing alone in the water? Surely there is something below it here on which it rests, and in that something real must be.

¹⁹Having looked in this way, he entered the water within by the channels of that lotus stalk; but though he went down, searching for the navel that was the source of that firm stalk, the unborn one did not find it. ²⁰Vidura, while he searched in that shoreless darkness for his own origin, the great three-rimmed one came upon him, the weapon which rouses fear in embodied beings and wears away the life of the unborn one. ²¹Then that god turned back, his wish ungained, and reaching his own seat again, slowly mastering his breath and drawing his mind back, he sat down, risen into the yoga of samadhi. ²²In time, over the span of a person's life, his yoga well begun and his understanding grown, the unborn one saw within his own heart what was shining there, and saw what he had not seen before: