The Golden God

The Golden God, the Self, the immortal Swan
leaves the small nest of the body, goes where He wants.

He moves through the realm of dreams; makes numberless forms;
delights in sex; eats, drinks, laughs with His friends;
frightens Himself with scenes of heart-chilling terror.

But He is not attached to anything that He sees;
and after He has wandered in the realms of dream and awakeness,
has tasted pleasures and experienced good and evil,
He returns to the blissful state from which He began.

As a fish swims forward to one riverbank then the other,
Self alternates between awakeness and dreaming.

As an eagle, weary from long flight, folds its wings,
gliding down to its nest, Self hurries to the realm
of dreamless sleep, free of desires, fear, pain.

As a man in sexual union with his beloved
is unaware of anything outside or inside,
so a man in union with Self knows nothing, wants nothing,
has found his heart's fulfillment and is free of sorrow.

Father disappears, mother disappears, murderer,
rich man, beggar disappear, world disappears,
good and evil disappear; he has passed beyond sorrow.

~The Upanishads