Seeing this fine disciple bowed, one who had found the bliss of the self, whose truth had awakened and whose heart was glad, the great-souled guru spoke again. His first word rises from a plain image. As one who has eyes sees only form on every side and can see nothing else, so the intellect of the knower of Brahman sees only Brahman on every side. The world is merely a continuous current of Brahman-cognitions, so with a calm mind, with the inward eye, one is to see only Brahman in every state. Then a second image arrives. When the full moon blazes in the sky, deeply gladdening, who would want to look at a moon painted on paper. In the same way, once a person has tasted the supreme rasa of bliss, why would that learned one delight in tiny little voids.

The guru sets a test. The experience of an unreal object brings neither true contentment nor an end to sorrow. There is no sense in chasing such a thing, because the real source of contentment has already been found. So the word is direct: stay content with that nondual rasa of bliss, and sit at ease in devotion to the true self. Then a tender line arrives. Seeing only yourself in every way, holding yourself to be nondual, enjoying your own bliss, O great mind, pass the time. The guru is not commanding a duty here. He is only describing a state. And the address is worth noting: the disciple is no longer a fool, and the guru calls him great mind.

Now the guru turns toward silence. To place a distinction upon the atman, which is the form of undivided awareness and free of every distinction, is like imagining a city in the empty sky, an impossible thing. So, forever drawing supreme peace from that atman made of nondual bliss, take to silence alone. And this silence is more than the stopping of speech. The intellect is the very source of false imaginings; unreal, invented distinctions rise from there. So that quiet state of the intellect, its hush, is the supreme peace, and in it the nondual bliss of the self flows without break for the great-souled knower of Brahman. One word is decisive here: desirelessness. A silence full of craving keeps the inside loud. A silence free of craving is peaceful within as well, and for one who has known the form of the self and drinks the rasa of his own bliss, there is no joy greater than this silence.

Here the second part opens: the knower’s freedom from rule. The guru says something wide open. Walking, sitting, lying down, or in any other way, let the learned one be as the wish arises, for he is always the sage who delights in the self. No special posture of meditation, no auspicious hour, no fixed direction; whatever the outer gait, the inner dwelling stays one. And the reason runs deep. To know other things you need rules like place, time, posture, direction, and restraint. Knowing your own atman is self-cognition, nearest of all, purest of all, so what rule could hold there. Just as knowing “this is a pot” needs only a good eye and light, no vow and no rule, so too the atman is ever-established: given the right means of knowledge, it shines of itself, waiting on no place, no time, no purification.

The guru makes this even simpler. Just as knowing “I am Devadatta” needs no mirror and no one else’s confirmation, since it is knowledge that leans on nothing, so too the knower of Brahman’s cognition “I am Brahman” asks for no one’s seal. Then he turns the very effort to prove the atman on its head. The atman by whose radiance the whole world shines as if by the sun, how could any non-self, unreal, trifling thing ever light it up. You do not see the sun by a lamp; it is the sun that reveals the lamp. The Vedas, the shastras, the Puranas, and all living beings gain their meaning only when someone is there to know them, so who could give meaning to that root knower. This atman is self-luminous, infinite in power, beyond measure, the ground of all experience, and the one who knows it and is freed from bondage becomes the very best of the best among the knowers of Brahman, the victor.

Now the third part begins: the knower’s colorful daily gait. First the guru draws a picture, four denials and two acceptances. He is not troubled, nor delighted by objects of sense; he clings to nothing, nor turns away in aversion. He only plays forever in the self, delights in the self alone, and stays content with the unbroken rasa of bliss. Then a tender image arrives. As a child forgets hunger and the body’s ache and sinks into a toy, so the learned one revels in the rasa of the self, free of possession, free of ego, happy. And the most living picture of all this is in the next shloka. Food from alms taken without any groveling, thirst answered by river water, fearless sleep in a cremation ground or a forest, the bare earth for a bed, perhaps no clothing at all or the directions themselves for a garment, and wandering through the lanes of Vedanta. Through all of it the real play of the knowers goes on in the supreme Brahman.

The guru offers a new image: the body is a vehicle. Leaning on this vehicle of a body, the knower takes in all the sense-objects that come before him like a child, enjoying them by the wish of others, yet his mark is unmanifest, unattached on the outside, carrying no sign by which anyone could tell that here is a knower. So his outer form does not stay one. Sometimes he is clad in the four quarters, the directions his only garment; sometimes clothed; sometimes wrapped in nothing but skin; within, he always rests in the sky of pure consciousness. Sometimes like a madman, sometimes like a child, sometimes like a ghoul, he wanders upon the earth. On the outside there is no mold. Within, one thing alone is true: he dwells in the self. As for desire, he has become the very form of the desireless, a sage wandering alone, forever content in his own self, and standing as the self of all.

Now comes the shloka that is the heart of the whole part, eight times “somewhere.” In one place he looks a fool, in another a scholar; somewhere carrying the splendor of a great king, somewhere bewildered and gentle; somewhere lying still as a python; somewhere made an honored vessel, somewhere scorned, somewhere wholly unknown. So the wise one moves about, and through all of it stays happy with unbroken supreme bliss. The outer colors keep changing, the inside stays one, because the grip of “this is what I must become” is simply not in him. And from this many contradictions turn easy. Poor and yet always content, helpless and yet of great strength, ever-satisfied and yet eating nothing, unequal to all and yet seeing all with an equal eye.

The guru completes this picture with two final paradoxes. He appears to act, yet within he is a non-doer; he appears to enjoy the fruits, yet he is no enjoyer; he bears a body, yet he is bodiless; he appears bounded, yet he is all-pervading. This doubleness is no trick. It is the truth itself: on the outside, at one level, everything is happening; within, at another level, nothing is happening. And its root lies in one thing: this knower of Brahman is forever bodiless and never takes the body to be his own. So neither the pleasant nor the unpleasant touches him, nor the good nor the bad, because touching needs a body, and the body has no place at all in what he takes himself to be. This is the daily ground of the knower.