Shloka 24
Dehānta (Cyavana) and Upapatti: Kāśyapa’s Questions and the Siddha’s Account of Death, Pain, and Karmic Re-embodiment
स्रोतोभिरययर्विजानाति इन्द्रियार्थान् शरीरभूत्
srotobhir ayayar vijānāti indriyārthān śarīrabhūtān; dehadhārī jīvaḥ yena indriyaiḥ rūpa-rasa-ādi-viṣayān anubhavati, taiḥ sa bhojanena paripuṣṭa-prāṇān na jānāti. asya śarīrasya bhitare sthitvā yaḥ karma karoti, sa sanātano jīvaḥ.
The Siddha said: “Through the body’s channels one apprehends the objects of the senses bound to the physical frame. Yet the embodied being—who, by the senses, experiences form, taste, and the rest—does not, by those same instruments, truly know the life-breaths (prāṇa) sustained by food. Dwelling within this body and performing action, that agent is the eternal living self (jīva).”
सिद्ध उवाच
Educational Q&A
Sense-faculties reveal external objects (form, taste, etc.), but they do not by themselves disclose the inner principle of life—the prāṇas sustained by food—nor the deeper agent within. The verse points toward discerning the eternal jīva (self) as distinct from sensory experience and bodily processes.
A Siddha is instructing about the nature of embodied existence: how perception operates through bodily channels and senses, and why the true inner self that acts while dwelling in the body is not grasped merely through sensory cognition.