Verse 48

⁴⁸A man's own coming and going are to be guessed at from his father and his son. But one who knows the things that come and go is not marked by that pair. ⁴⁹He who knows a tree's birth and its ending from its seed and its ripening is other than the tree, one who watches it. So is the watcher separate from the body. ⁵⁰Not having thus told the self apart from Nature, the man without understanding, wholly bewildered by contact, comes into the round of birth. ⁵¹By clinging to clarity he goes to the sages and the gods, by passion to demons and men, by darkness to the state of spirits and of beasts — driven along by his works.

⁵²As a man watching others dance and sing takes to doing as they do, so, watching the qualities of the understanding, he is made to imitate them, though he does nothing. ⁵³As with water in motion the trees too seem to move, and to an eye that is being whirled the earth is seen as if it whirled,