अथ यदा सुषुप्तः भवति यदा न कस्य चन वेद हिताः नाम नाड्यः द्वासप्ततिः सहस्राणि हृदयात् पुरीततम् अभिप्रतिष्ठन्ते ताभिः प्रत्यवसृप्य पुरीतति शेते सः यथा कुमारः वा महाराजः वा महाब्राह्मणः वा वातिघ्नीम् आनन्दस्य गत्वा शयीत एवम् एव एषः एतत् शेते
atha yadā suṣuptaḥ bhavati yadā na kasya cana veda hitāḥ nāma nāḍyaḥ dvāsaptatiḥ sahasrāṇi hṛdayāt purītatam abhipratiṣṭhante tābhiḥ pratyavasṛpya purītati śete saḥ yathā kumāraḥ vā mahārājaḥ vā mahābrāhmaṇaḥ vā vātighnīm ānandasya gatvā śayīta evam eva eṣaḥ etat śete
And when he is in deep sleep and knows nothing at all, then, having come back by the seventy-two thousand channels called hitā that run from the heart to the pericardium, he rests in it. As a youth, or a great king, or a great brāhmaṇa would rest, having reached the summit of bliss, so does he rest.
43b1c440519b · published Jul 27, 2026, 12:52:10 AM UTC
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The third station is deep sleep: along the 72,000 hitā channels the conscious one returns from the body into the purītat, the covering of the heart, and "knows nothing". But how that not-knowing is named! — by a threefold comparison of happiness: like a youth (carefree), like a great king (everything accomplished), like a great brāhmaṇa (everything understood), "having reached the summit of bliss" (ānandasya… gatvā). Deep sleep is not a blackout but a mooring of bliss; every mortal nightly tastes a trace of that repose in which the liberated live.
So the king has answered his own question, "where was the sleeper?": in the heart, in bliss, at home. It remains to show what this resting one is to all the rest of the world — and the next verse does it with two images that have entered every school of Vedānta.