Verse 25

²⁵Laying on the self, which is beyond the strands, what belongs to breath and sense and mind, he lies there brooding on scraps of desire, saying mine and I, and doing works. ²⁶When a Person who sees by his own light fails to know the Self, the Bhagavan, the highest teacher, and clings instead to the strands of nature, ²⁷then, taking the strands for himself, he does works with no say in the matter, white or black or red, and is born according to his works. ²⁸From the white he comes sometimes to worlds full of light; and sometimes to worlds that end in pain, all labour of work, thick with darkness and grief. ²⁹Sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes neither, blind in his understanding; a god, a human being, or a beast: birth follows the quality of the work.

³⁰As a wretched dog, hemmed in by hunger, goes from house to house and gets what is set for it, a beating or else some rice,