O Rama, listen as the nature of the mind and its workings are revealed. In the beginning, there exists the pure, unblemished essence of the Self. Yet, a second perception arises—an appearance of what is unborn and truly non-existent. This is known as ignorance. It emerges suddenly, obscuring the Self, causing one to forget that original state. Through a web of false conceptualization, this impurity is imagined and believed. As this ignorance unfolds, it delights Indra through the activities of hearing, creating, seeing, enjoying, smelling, and reflecting. Thus, it is called the sense organ, reveling in experience. All the multitude of visible things arise in the supreme, unmanifest Self; the very nature of the world is called ‘nature’—the inherent order of things. There is a power that swiftly moves being into non-being and non-being into being, endlessly weaving distinctions between the real and the unreal. This is called maya, the great illusion. Through actions of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, and doing, this power is known in the world as ‘activity,’ assuming the roles of cause and effect. When consciousness follows its objects and becomes tainted, taking on the forms of what is manifest, these are its various modes of operation. When it departs from its natural state and adopts the form of mind, it becomes firmly established in countless independent imaginations. This consciousness, now marked by the stains of sentience, caught in the web of dullness and filled with divisions, is itself agitated by its own imaginings. In the world, this is called jiva—the individual soul. It is also called mind, citta (consciousness), and buddhi (intellect). The wise speak of this tainted one, fallen from reality, as a mass of various imaginations and a collection of ever-changing states. O Brahman, there is uncertainty: is the mind insentient or conscious? Even the knower of truth cannot easily settle this within. The mind, O Rama, is neither fully inert nor fully conscious; it is a faded perception, not wholly one nor the other. This form, appearing in the space between existence and non-existence, clouded and indistinct, is the very cause of the world and is called the mind. The mind lacks a permanent, single form or certainty; from this arises the world. It is that imagination which swings between inert and conscious perceptions, its nature faded and indistinct. The impure flow of consciousness, marked by many stains and differences, is called the mind—it is neither wholly inert nor purely conscious. To this, many diverse names are given: ego, mind, intellect, soul, and others. Just as an actor assumes different roles, so too does the mind take on different names as it performs various actions. Like a person who acquires different titles according to the tasks he performs, the mind, depending on its functions, is called by different names. O Raghava, the terms for the mind I have described are spoken in many ways by others, with hundreds of imagined distinctions. People, projecting their own reasoning, have created various names and descriptions for the mind, intellect, senses, and more. For one, the mind is insentient; for another, it is alive; ego and intellect are defined differently by different thinkers. O delight of the Raghu lineage, I have explained that ego, mind, and intellect are one in essence, though others imagine them as separate in creation. The Naiyayikas conceive them otherwise; the Sankhyas and Charvakas imagine them differently still. The Jaiminiyas, Arhatas, Buddhists, Vaisheshikas, and others—such as the Pancharatras—each hold their own varied views. Yet, despite all these differences, all must ultimately reach that supreme state of the Self, just as travelers from different places and times all arrive at the same city. Because of ignorance of the highest truth and mistaken understanding, they dispute, each wishing to establish their own opinions. Debaters praise their own path with elaborate reasoning, each like a traveler extolling his route, shaped by the diverse places and times from which they come. Raghava, the doctrines they proclaim are false, devised by minds shaped by their own imagined meanings, each with its own peculiarities. Just as one person, performing acts of bathing, giving, receiving, and eating, attains variety in agency, so too does the mind exhibit such diversity. Because of its manifold activities, agency is ascribed to the mind under various names—such as the tendencies of the living being, actions, and their designations. All this experience is only the mind; for one without mind, even seeing, he does not truly see in this world. When hearing, touching, seeing, smelling, or tasting what is auspicious or inauspicious, one with a mind perceives inner joy or sorrow. The mind is the cause of objects, just as light is for forms; one whose mind is bound is bound, and one whose mind is free is liberated. Know that the mind called ‘dull’ is suited for the dull, and that the mind is dull for one whose consciousness is dull. This mind that has arisen is neither conscious nor inert; from it, this world, with all its pleasures and pains, has emerged. Indeed, when the mind is of a single form, samsara dissolves; confusion arises from turbidity, and through confusion, the world appears. The mind, which is not inert, is not the cause of samsara; nor is the inert, like a stone, the cause of samsara. The mind is the cause of objects, just as forms are revealed by light; apart from consciousness, what is this world to the unconscious? Thus, O Rama, the mind is the source and the stage of all worldly experience, veiling the pure Self with its own imaginings and distinctions, yet pointing ever toward the supreme truth that lies beyond all names and concepts.