Śāṅkhāyana (Kauṣītaki) Āraṇyaka 3.2

3.2

He said: "All those who depart from this world go to the moon alone. By their breaths the waxing fortnight swells; through the waning fortnight it causes them to be reborn. The moon is indeed the gate of the heavenly world. Whoever answers it, it lets him pass beyond. But whoever does not answer it, having become rain, it rains him down here. He is reborn here according to his deeds, according to his knowledge, as a worm, or an insect, or a fish, or a bird, or a lion, or a boar, or a snake, or a tiger, or a man, or as something else in these various places. When he has arrived, it asks him: 'Who are you?' He should answer it: 'From the far-seeing one, O seasons, the seed has been gathered, brought from the fifteenfold, produced, from the realm of the ancestors. As such, direct me into a male agent; through a male agent pour me into a mother. / He, being born, being generated in the twelfth or thirteenth month, / alongside the father of twelve or thirteen months—that I know, that I recognize; therefore, O seasons, take hold of me for immortality! / By that truth, by that austerity, I am the season, I am born of the seasons.' 'Who are you?' 'I am you.' Then it lets him pass beyond."