O sinless one, consider this: when a person’s mind is deluded into believing, “This is my physical body,” he cannot pass through even the tiniest opening. But for one whose understanding is not limited by the thoughts, “I am blocked by this,” or “I am not here,” experience itself becomes the experiencer—there is no separation. When someone perceives the first stirrings of experience, thinking, “I will go,” that very consciousness performs the act. How then does awareness shift from intending to act to actually moving forward? Just as water does not rise upwards, nor does fire descend, so too does consciousness proceed according to its own nature, remaining as it was set in motion. Imagine this: how could someone sitting in the shade feel the heat of the sun? The experience of one is never felt by another. In whatever direction the mind moves, there it remains; only through supreme effort can it be brought to another state. The illusion of a snake in a rope, born of a mistaken perception, is dispelled only by forceful understanding; otherwise, it lingers as it is. As one’s awareness is, so is the mind; as the mind is, so are one’s actions. Even a child can see this truth—who among us does not experience it? But what of the form seen in dream, imagination, or image—having only the shape of space? How, and by whom, could such a thing be restrained? For everyone, everywhere, the body is but mind. It is felt as sensation, yet sometimes it seems to arise from the heart. Sunrise and sunset, too, are as each conceives them: at the beginning of creation, they arise from nature itself; later, from contemplation of duality and unity. Know that the space of the mind, the space of consciousness, and physical space are truly one, inseparable in their existence. This mind-body is all-pervading in its arising; as soon as there is desire for experience, it comes forth, and with experience it arises. It dwells within the tiniest speck of dust, is carried into the hollow of the sky, merges into the seed-casings, and becomes sap in the sprouting plant. It shines as the wave of water, dances within the heart of a stone, pours down as a raincloud, and, becoming stone, remains firm. This mind-body moves as it wishes through the sky and even within the bellies of mountains; it assumes the form of infinite space, then that of a minute atom. It supports the great mountains, is the fixed seat with the sky as its head, bearing the body’s interior and exterior, and sprouts forms of countless varieties. It becomes space itself, holding millions of lotus-born abodes, unique as the ocean of its own self, like the formation of countless whirlpools. Before awareness has arisen, this mind-body at the beginning of creation is vast as space; becoming great, it comes to know, and having attained its own nature, it abides. Its watery nature is, in truth, unreal, yet appears to arise through understanding—just as a man in a dream imagines himself to be the son of a barren woman. Is this mind, or is it not? How does it become what it is, and how do forms arise from it—or not—in an instant? Each mind possesses this power to form appearances; for every mind, distinct illusions of the world arise separately. Worlds—lasting but a moment or an epoch—arise and dissolve; for some, in the blink of an eye, for others, over vast ages. This is the sequence: immediately after death or from great delusion, this state occurs, emerging swiftly or slowly. The stupor that comes with death and its kind is experienced individually by each; this, O wise one, is the path to the great dissolution. Afterward, each being separately unfolds creation, just as one’s dreams, imaginations, and confusions move and shift. At the end of the night of the great dissolution, the cosmic self—whose form is mind—manifests this world; likewise, after death, each being does so individually. Creation after death is experienced as memory; so too does the cosmic self experience it. Thus, the universe does not arise without cause. O Rāma, at the time of the great dissolution, all beings—even Viṣṇu and Śiva—attain disembodied liberation; how could memory exist then? One whose self is awakened, like ours, is necessarily liberated. How then could beings like Brahmā and others, who are disembodied, not be liberated? But for those living beings who exist now, in the cycles of death and birth, memory becomes the cause of continued existence, due to the absence of liberation. When the living being, at the end of the stupor of death, seems to awaken within, yet remains unawakened, that is called the primary state. That is called space, that is primordial nature, the unmanifest—both inert and conscious. This is the sequence of transmigration and forgetfulness at the arising of the world. When that great principle inclines toward awakening and is awakened, from that space arise the subtle elements, directions, time, action, being, and so on. That same undifferentiated state, not yet awakened, becomes the five senses; when awakened, it becomes the body—this is the subtle body. Through impressions accumulated over a long time, filled with imagination, this subtle body assumes the awareness of physical embodiment—so it is for all. At the very moment a being dies, it swiftly perceives the entire world-experience as it is, right there. Through space alone, it experiences the clear illusion, “I am this world”; the living being, of the nature of space, seems to be born as a self of the form of space. Cities, towns, mountains, suns, and clusters of stars—all filled with the teeth of old age, death, weakness, and the caverns of disease and distress—arise in this way. With the rush of being and non-being, gross and subtle, moving and unmoving, with mountains, earth, rivers, regions, days and nights, and the rise and fall of aeons—thus does the world appear and dissolve, in the vast play of mind and consciousness.