As the seeker turns inward and contemplates auspicious thoughts, the mind becomes clear and steady, and the dense clouds of false knowledge are gently dissolved. With the increase of goodness, like the waxing moon in its bright fortnight, discernment and virtue expand, and the world shines with the radiant brilliance of the sun. When steadfastness grows within, liberation arises naturally, like the wind stirring through bamboo; and as inner stability is firmly established, delight appears, gentle as moonlight in the night. The tree of good company bears fruit, casting a cool shade, and from the straight tree of samadhi flows the nectar of bliss. The mind, once troubled by duality, becomes free from desire, undisturbed, and rid of the restlessness, greed, delusion, and fear that cause suffering. All doubts about the meaning of scriptures are exhausted; curiosity fades away, the web of imagination is dispelled, and one lives liberated, untouched. Such a one is free from desire, anger, expectation, and anxiety. The mist of sorrow is fully calmed, and, unattached and unbound by doctrines, the person stands serene. Having destroyed his own mind—the charioteer of the fierce horses of the senses and the cage of craving and attachments—he attains the supreme purpose: sovereignty over himself. He abandons the notions that fatten the self, just as a loyal servant, when his duties are done, casts off his body as if it were a blade of grass. The rise and fall of the mind is the rise and fall of all; its destruction is the great attainment. True knowledge leads to the dissolution of the mind, while ignorance causes it to grow. The world-wheel is nothing but mind; the mountain ranges are mind; the sky is mind; the body, friend, and enemy—all are mind. The impurity of imagination, which is the forgetting of the true nature of consciousness, is called ‘mind’; this tendency, which brings about worldly existence, is known as vāsanā. Consciousness, tinged with the sequence of perceptions and slightly tainted by imagination, is called the individual soul (jīva), which is but the essence of mind. That which, having fallen under the sway of perceptions, acquires a fixed identity and enters into ignorance, expands further and is imagined as the state of mind. The self is not the person of worldly existence, nor the body, nor the blood; all things such as the body are inert, while the embodied one is like space, untouched. When the body is cut into particles, nothing remains but blood and so forth, just as when a plantain stem is split, nothing remains but the leaves. Know the mind to be the living being, the person, having assumed that very form; the self fashions itself from its own imagined fragments. The person, spreading out threads of his own imagination, weaves them into a net for self-binding, just as a worm makes a cocoon. Having abandoned this bodily delusion, in another place and time, he takes up a different body, just as a sprout assumes the state of a leaf. Whatever disposition exists, such is the mind that arises; whatever a person’s mind is as he sleeps, that he sees in his dream at night. Water, when mixed with sweetness, becomes sweet; a seed soaked in poison becomes bitter. Through a great auspicious disposition, the mind becomes great; from the kingdom of Indra’s mind, a person attains the state of Indra, even in a dream. By petty desires, the mind becomes small and feeble, just as, through the delusion of ghosts, a healthy person sees ghosts at night. When the mind is expansive and pure, impurity does not remain; likewise, when the mind is expansive and impure, clarity does not remain. The results arise accordingly: when expansive and impure, impurity arises; when expansive and pure, purity arises. Even when diminished, the truly excellent person does not abandon the noble path, being ever diligent, like the moon fulfilling the hope of fullness without ceasing. Here, there is neither bondage nor liberation, neither one bound nor binding; this is only an illusion arisen falsely, like a vine of magical tricks. This world, made of non-being, is like a city of the Gandharvas, arising from the sequence of a mirage, and appears like the illusion of two moons. The uncertainty that says, 'I am not infinite, I am insignificant,' arises; but by the certainty, 'I am infinite, I am supreme,' it is dissolved. This conception, 'I am all-pervading, pure in my own self,' is the bondage in the world, imagined by one's own mental constructions. The state devoid of bondage and liberation, free from duality and unity, is entirely the essence of Brahman; this is the highest truth. When the mind attains purity and is unattached in all perceptions, it becomes as if mindless; only then does one perceive Brahman, not otherwise. When the mind is purified by the waters of auspicious contemplation, it acquires the vision of Brahman, just as a white cloth takes on color in a dye. When, through true conviction, everything is regarded as 'I' and 'mine,' and the distinction of acceptance and rejection is exhausted, what can be said of bondage or liberation? For the purified mind, the body, guided by scriptural wisdom and dispassion, sheds and regains its radiance, like a noble gemstone. When the mind attains unity with an object, that state of mental oneness, arising from imperfect knowledge, is momentary and perishable. When the mind, having abandoned all external and internal perceptions, remains absorbed, then that state is the attainment of the supreme goal. This clear perception of the seen and the seer is necessarily unreal; the absorption of the mind in that is its true nature, not anything else. Because the beginning and end are subject to destruction, what lies in between is also unreal; thus, the mind that knows wrongly is distressed, though the object is in hand. If one does not perceive 'this world is the Self,' it brings suffering; otherwise, this visible splendor alone bestows both enjoyment and liberation.