This is Vivekachudamani at its most unguarded turn. The student has grasped the great saying, and right here the guru delivers a jolt: understanding by itself is not enough. We know we should not give in to anger, and still, the moment an occasion comes, anger rises on its own. This is vasana, the deep habit seated below understanding, I am the doer, I am the enjoyer, and it is also the very cause of samsara (the round of worldly life). Knowledge reaches only the surface mind; the vasanas sit in its roots, and they do not leave in a single stroke. Liberation is no sudden blast. It is the slow, patient dwindling of the vasanas, and this is what the sages call liberation. The first task is straightforward: the sense of I and mine laid over the non-self, the body, the senses, and the rest, this superimposition the knower keeps removing, again and again, while resting firm in his own atman (the self). And having known that inner atman, the witness of the intellect and its movements, each time the old current I am this body rises, in its place he settles the true current soham, I am That. You do not batter the old impression out by force. You settle a new impression in its place.

Now the guru counts three anuvartanas, three followings, three things a person keeps chasing without a thought. One, loka, the world, the pull of what will people say. Two, deha, the body, running behind its every demand. Three, shastra, the scriptures, endlessly memorizing books and turning study itself into one more bondage. This does not mean fleeing society or neglecting the body. It means only this: do not move behind them like a machine, and svadhyasapanayam kuru. The guru gives the reason for dropping all three at once: the vasanas of these three are such weeds in the field of the mind that the seed of knowledge cannot even sprout. A mind knotted with worry, a body sunk in pleasure, an ego stuffed with scripture, in none of these is there room left for a fresh ray of truth. And the guru offers a powerful image: samsara is a prison whose doors stand open, yet an iron chain lies on the seeker’s feet, and that chain is these three vasanas. The road to freedom runs through the unlocking of the chain on your own feet. Whoever slips loose of these reaches liberation.

Now the guru opens a down-to-earth comparison. Suppose there is a piece of precious fragrant wood, but it has lain in water for years, so a foul stench has settled over its surface. Someone who does not know will take it for stinking timber and throw it away. But let someone rub it, again and again, with care, and the surface stench lifts and the original divine fragrance within begins to come through. Inside the seeker there is just such an original fragrance, one’s own nature as the supreme Self, over which the dust of the vasanas has gathered. The guru is unsparing: these are duranta vasanas, hard to remove, forever returning; and they are cleaned only by the deep friction of prajna, insight pressed with steady force, and then, like the scent of sandalwood, that original nature comes out clear. Then a word of relief: this natural pull toward the atman has always been inside the seeker, only the net of non-self vasanas has kept it covered. There is no new self-vasana to grow, you have only to let the old net fall away. And this work unfolds gradually, in an as-you-go, so-it-goes rhythm, like a balance scale: as the mind settles inward, the outer vasanas loosen on their own, and when the outer pan comes to rest at zero, the experience of the atman arrives with nothing left to block it.

From here begins a call of nine verses, each closing on the same single line, svadhyasapanayam kuru, do the work of removing your false identification. Read it like a mantra, the same call from a fresh angle each time. The first angle, resting in the atman: by staying always in his own atman the yogi’s mind grows quiet within its movements, and by this the vasanas wear away. The second angle, the rising ladder of the three gunas: at the bottom the sloth of tamas, above it the restlessness of rajas, above that the clarity of sattva. Each higher guna removes the one below it, so climb by leaning on sattva, but in the end pass beyond even sattva through pure consciousness, because it too is only a guna, one more layer to cross. The third angle, a reassurance: if someone holds himself to be the atman alone, what becomes of the body? The guru answers this worry, prarabdha (destiny already in motion) will keep this body fed. The body’s ordinary business goes on, only let the fear that I must do all of it fall away, and with this trust, carrying both patience and effort, keep removing the superimposition.

The fourth angle is a daily method, a two-pole remembrance. Each time the vasana I am a jiva (the individual self) rises with force, and rise it will, cut it into two parts, the first I am not this, the second I am the supreme Brahman. Negation by itself makes an emptiness, and saying I am Brahman by itself makes a pageant of a new identity, so hold both together. The fifth angle, the three proofs of knowledge, and all three are needed: shruti, the word of scripture; yukti, testing by your own reason; and sva-anubhuti, your own direct experience. Go by shruti alone and it is blind belief, by reason alone and it is dry intellect, by experience alone and it is delusion; only when all three stand together is the all-pervadingness of the atman truly known, and even then, wherever the old identity slips back through appearance, keep removing it. The sixth angle is the subtlest, neither taking nor letting go. Most practice sways between two poles, gain this and give up that, yet the true muni comes to rest between them, not running to acquire anything, not straining to push anything away, only staying still in that one atman. The largest work is to do nothing at all, only to stay, and in this staying the superimposition begins to lift on its own.

The seventh angle turns the great saying straight into a tool. Tat tvam asi, the thing already understood, do not seat it on your head as an ornament, put it to work. Whenever the old identity rises, let the memory come, no, tat tvam asi, and this repetition is no dry rote, each time the realization grows fresher, until one day it is so firm that the old identity finds no room to rise at all. The eighth angle tells how long this work will run, up to the remainderless dissolution, that is, until not even a particle of I is left in this body. This is both a warning and a reassurance: do not stop when a little understanding arrives, and know that this work has an end, it is not endless; and carry it out through savadhana, a gentle watchfulness, in place of harsh discipline. And the ninth angle gives a test for knowing whether the work is finished. As long as the jiva and the world appear even dreamlike, that is, as long as they are seen with even a little distance, let the work go on; only when that appearance too falls away is the work complete. And the guru offers a tender address, vidvan, O learned one, trusting his student’s understanding. Nine times the same call, from nine angles, with a single rule, do not stop.

Now comes the work of settling inward. The guru warns against four things: the sloth of sleep, drifting into gossip, the flow of outside words, and the cleverest of all, forgetting. A moment comes without warning, the thread slips from within, and the same old identity starts up again; give none of them an opening, because once a single link of the chain loosens, the whole chain begins to bind again. Keep no outer object of meditation, contemplate the atman only within the atman. Then the guru gives some sharp words, set this body far off, like a chandala. This carries no hatred of the body, and no putting down of any group of people; in the language of that age it points only to a thing kept at a distance, and the real matter is dropping the over-identification with the body. And along with the dropping, a settling, become of the form of Brahman and be kriti, krita-kritya, one whose work is done. Then the comparison that holds the highest place in this part returns, the space in a pot. Inside a pot is a little bounded space, and outside the boundless great space; the two are in truth one, the pot only a false wall. Let that wall fall, and the space within merges into the space without, or rather, it becomes known that it was never separate at all. And the guru gives a tender close, tushnim bhava, become still. Words finished, doctrine finished, only that vast silence.

Now the guru grows bolder. Not the body alone, drop the cosmos too, both of them like a vessel of filth. What we split apart by calling one large and the other small are two shapes of the same non-self; do not recognize yourself in this small body, nor in this vast cosmos, because the seeker is that self-luminous ground in which both come and go. And when the intellect that says I am the body comes to rest in the conscious atman, in eternal bliss, and even the I-tie with the subtle body falls away, what remains is the kevala, the alone, pure, without a second. This aloneness carries no ache of separation; it is the oneness-state of advaita, and Sankhya-Yoga names it kaivalya. Then a striking comparison, a city set inside a mirror. A whole city shows in a large mirror, trees, buildings, people, yet inside the mirror there is nothing; the city only appears there, its changing does not change the mirror, and the city does not soil it. This whole world-appearance shows on that one mirror, and that mirror is Brahman; on knowing that Brahman am I the seeker becomes krita-kritya. You are that mirror, everything appearing in it, and you untouched.

Now the guru gives a beautiful comparison, that of an actor. A skilled actor on stage sinks fully into the part, a king when cast as a king, a beggar when cast as a beggar; but stepping behind the curtain he takes off the costume and remembers that it was only a role. This body too is a costume, a role, play it honestly, yet having reached your true form, that conscious non-dual bliss, formless and free of action, take off this false body the way an actor does. This strikes straight at the fear of death: death is only the taking off of a costume, and nothing of the seeker is lost. Then the guru gives a sharp logical proof of the real I. The I made of body and mind is momentary, changing every instant, halting each night in sleep, so the experience I know everything and I am the same one I was yesterday cannot belong to this momentary I at all, for how would a momentary thing know everything? There must be some deep, unmomentary witness, and that is the real one. And the proof of it comes in ordinary deep sleep; there the small I halts, yet someone was surely present, or else who knew in the morning that I slept well? That same witness was present even in deep sleep, and by this it is unborn and eternal, distinct from both the real and the unreal.

Now Part 10 turns toward its close. To watch the current of a river, the watcher has to stand on the bank; if he is flowing himself, he will never see the current at all. All the changes, the mind, the body, samsara, are a river, and the one who watches them is surely something steady and changeless, and this is the real I. And in the three daily experiences, daydream, dream, and deep sleep, in each the grip of the small I and of the world loosens, yet the witness stays; so the real I has already been found, every night, again and again. Therefore, the guru says, give up the pride in this lump of flesh, and, subtler still, the pride even in that intellect-imagined I-feeling that takes pride in the lump, because the understanding I am this body is itself a construction of the intellect. And at the end the guru gives a sharp word, ardra-shava, wet corpse, meaning this body. A person spends a whole life guarding family, lineage, name, form, ashrama, and rank, and all of these rest on that wet corpse which one day truly becomes a corpse. Let go of the pride in all of them, and of the subtle-body sense of doership, I am the one who acts, and by knowing that undivided awareness which stands unerased through all three times, your own atman, become of the nature of undivided joy, and reach peace.