The guru first shows the opening door of yoga, and this door opens by doing less. Restraint of speech, non-possession, freedom from craving, freedom from restless effort, and a steady love of solitude: these five qualities open that door. When these five outward-facing movements of the mind grow thin, energy begins to turn inward. Then he threads the whole method into a single chain. Solitude stills the senses, breath-control becomes the instrument for reining in the mind, tranquility dissolves the drive of ego, and from that the yogi comes to the unshakable taste of the bliss of Brahman. The conclusion is one: the sage’s only constant work is the reining in of the mind, the stilling of its movements.

Now he gives a subtle, four-step method for reining in the mind, an echo of the Katha Upanishad and the Gita. Hold speech within the mind, hold the mind within the intellect, hold the intellect within its witness, the self, and then dissolve even that witness into the full self, the undivided, and rest in supreme peace. As a river meets the sea, each level grows quiet within the level above it. And behind this lies one basic law: whatever conditioning layer the mind attaches to, it takes on that very form. Attach to the body, and “I am the body”; attach to the breath, and “I am hungry”; attach to the mind, and “I am sad.” The same mind each time, a new identity each time. So the work is to loosen the mind’s movement from these layers. And when that link breaks, in the quieting of them all a happiness appears, and a flood of the experience of endless bliss begins to flow and does not stop. The work is to let things come to rest.

Then the guru opens the two layers of renunciation. Outer renunciation and inner renunciation are both possible only for the dispassionate, and the dispassionate one does this out of a longing for liberation, without any forcing. Outer attachment shows itself with sense-objects, and people try to give it up; the inner attachment, the grip of “I” and “mine,” stays hidden, and its release is the hardest of all. To give up both, two things are needed: dispassion, meaning the loosening of the grip, and steadiness in Brahman, meaning settling somewhere else. Only the dispassionate one grounded in Brahman can release both attachments at once.

Now comes the most memorable image of this part. Dispassion and insight are a person’s two wings, and a bird does not fly with one wing. Dispassion alone can turn into a dry, joyless renunciation; insight alone stays a bloodless intellectual grasp, never lived. When both are present, and both strong, only then can you climb the vine at the summit of the palace of liberation. Then the guru binds this into a chain of cause: from deep dispassion comes samadhi, from samadhi firm awakening, from awakening freedom from bondage, and from liberation eternal happiness. Each link is the door to the next, and the very first link, intense dispassion, is also the greatest obstacle for most seekers. And then he says something startling: for the one who has mastered the self, nothing gives rise to more happiness than dispassion. Whoever is a slave to his own desires holds no sovereignty of his own; the dispassionate one, slave to no one, enjoys the empire of self-rule. This is the doorway to the ever-flowing maiden of liberation, so keep yourself free of craving everywhere and always turn your wisdom toward the true self.

Now the guru sets the whole compact teaching into a single shloka. Cut off hope in sense-objects that are like poison; this is what it truly means to do the work of death upon them. Drop the pride of birth, family, and station, give up actions from a great distance, let go of taking the impermanent body for the self. And in three words he names your whole identity: you are the seer, you are beyond the mind, you are in truth the second-less supreme Brahman. You are this already, at the root, with nothing to become. Then a full meditation-process, whose closing instruction is the sweetest. Fix the mind firmly on Brahman as your aim, set the senses in their places, keep the body still and pay no attention to its condition, and with an unbroken flow gladly drink the bliss of Brahman within the self. This is the language of drinking, of savoring; and when the original bliss-rasa is at hand, what use are those empty leftover flavors.

Here the guru names the turn of the whole part: from dwelling on the not-self toward dwelling on the self. The mind is always thinking of something; the work is to change the direction of its thinking. The world, people, problems, objects, all of this is dwelling on the not-self, soiled and sorrow-giving; and the real “I,” whose nature is bliss, the giver of liberation, this is dwelling on the self. And the guru says something that goes to the heart: the self is not some far-off thing. It is self-luminous, witness to all, already present in the sheath of knowing, shining at every moment without a break. You do not need to search for it; you only make it your aim and, as something wholly distinct from the unreal, experience it as your own form through an unbroken flow of awareness. And let this flow carry three marks: unbroken, free of other notions, and clear; in this unbroken, unmixed, clear stream let the knowing “I am that very form” be underlined without cease.

Now the practice grows finer still. While firming up selfhood in the real self, and dropping the sense of self in the “I” and the rest, stay indifferent toward them, exactly like a plain pot sitting in front of you; it is visible, yet you feel no attachment to it and no aversion, only “it is there.” Look at your own ego, your own mind, your own old identity in just this way. Then settle the purified inner instrument into its true form, the witness that is pure awareness, and slowly, slowly bring stillness, and then behold only the full self. This happens “शनैः शनैः”, little by little. Force a shaking vessel of water to be still and it shakes more; simply set it down, and it grows calm on its own. The mind is like this too: as it settles into the witness, stillness comes of itself, and then the whole form begins to reveal itself.

Now the guru gives a generous, liberating image: the great sky. Body, senses, breath, mind, ego, all of these are conditioning layers fashioned out of ignorance; see the self, free of all of them, undivided and full, as the vast sky. The sky inside a pot looks small, yet it is truly the great sky itself, and the walls of the pot have only made it look small; the self too is truly the great sky, and the conditioning layers have made it into a “small I.” And the sky is one, whether it sits in a pot, in a grain-store, or at the tip of a needle, and among countless shapes it never becomes many, it stays one. The pure form of the self is just so, showing in every “I,” and one, never many. Even from Brahma down to a blade of grass, every conditioning layer is nothing but false; high and low, great and small, all of it the play of these layers. At the level of being, all are one and the same self.

Now the old image of the rope and snake returns with a new layer. Wherever something was fashioned by illusion, discerning sight shows it to be only its own ground, nothing separate from it. The snake was never apart from the rope, it was the rope all along, only seen in reverse; when the illusion cleared, the snake did not go anywhere, what opened was its real identity. In the same way this whole universe is the very form of the self. And then comes the guru’s most forceful proclamation: you yourself are Brahma, yourself Vishnu, yourself Indra, yourself Shiva, yourself this whole universe, and nothing apart from yourself. This is the open proclamation of “अहम् ब्रह्मास्मि,” and it carries no trace of ego: creator, sustainer, destroyer, and the whole universe, all forms of that one self, and you are that self. Then he scatters it across every dimension of space: yourself within, yourself without, yourself in front and behind, yourself to the north and south, yourself above and below; the same one on every side, and this is a present truth, not a matter of some future.

Now the guru brings a simple, solid image from water. In the sea, wave, foam, whirlpool, and bubbles all appear to be separate things, yet by their nature they are all that one water. In the same way, from the body up to the ego, everything is consciousness alone, of a single taste, wholly pure; no fear from the foam, no expectation of honor from the bubble, within too all are only consciousness. Then the image of clay and pot, with one sharp word. This whole world is being itself, and just as pitcher, pot, and jar are not separate from clay, nothing is separate from being; yet the deluded person, drunk on “माया-मदिरा,” the wine of maya, speaks of a difference between “you” and “me.” A drunk man sees things backward; when the intoxication lifts, all is one clay, all one being. And this is why the shruti repeats “नान्यद्,” nothing else, again and again. The old habit of “there is a second” is very strong and does not vanish on a single hearing; so this repetition runs on and on, until the false superimposition is undone.

Now the description reaches its summit. Clear as the sky, undivided, boundless, without tremor, changeless, free of any inner-outer difference, without another, non-dual, you yourself are the supreme Brahman, so what is left to know. This string of qualities keeps loosening every notion of “I am small,” and once you have known that you yourself are the supreme Brahman, all intellectual searching ends right there. The guru asks, as if weary, what more is there to say; only three sentences: Brahman alone is the living being, Brahman alone is the world, Brahman alone is “I.” Those of awakened mind hold to this one thing, let go of all that is outer, and live as Brahman itself, steady in an unbroken stream of consciousness-bliss. This is a way of living, something to be inhabited.

Now the guru lays out an order for releasing the grip layer by layer. First, with force, release the “I”-hope that clings to the gross body, the sheath of impurity and maya, because it is stubborn; then release the grip that clings to the air-like subtle body too, whose letting go is easier by comparison. And whatever remains, praised by the Vedas, eternal, the very form of bliss, know that as “self” and stand established as Brahman. Then comes a poignant play of words: “शव” and “शिव,” corpse and the auspicious, a difference of one letter that is the difference of a whole world. As long as a person takes himself to be “I am this body” and delights in the shape of a corpse, he stays impure, seized by affliction, a house of birth, death, and disease; but when he experiences the self as pure, in the shape of Shiva, unmoving, then he is free of all three. And the work is only this: to lift off every appearance-thing superimposed on the self, like the snake on the rope; whatever remains is the real form, the supreme Brahman, full, non-dual, action-free. This is the work of taking away, of lifting off what was never yours.

Now the theme of samadhi returns, and after this that steady refrain will begin. When the movement of the mind is absorbed into the undivided supreme self, Brahman, then no “विकल्प,” no this-or-that talk, is seen at all; and if any arises, it is only a web of words, nothing real. Just as the shapes of intoxication remain mere memory once the drink wears off, so after samadhi the talk of “you, me, and this” remains only the chatter of habit. And here begins the pulse of four shlokas, “निर्विकारे निराकारे निर्विशेषे भिदा कुतः.” The first time: this construct of “the world exists” is like the unreal within a single reality; in what is changeless, what does not alter, in what is formless, what has no shape, in what is without distinction, in which there is no division, where is there room for difference to sit. This is a question of wonder, and yet the living being keeps fashioning difference, which is why the guru repeats it again and again.

The refrain returns a second time and opens a deeper layer. Experience has three layers: the one who sees, the act of seeing, and the thing seen; this triad too is a distortion. Brahman comes before all three, where “I,” “seeing,” and “that” hold no difference at all, so in such a place where would difference sit. The third time a new image arrives: the ocean of dissolution; according to the Puranas, at the great dissolution everything melts into one vast sea, no land, no mountain, no island, only water, on every side, without a crack, and in such an utterly complete sea what difference could there be. And the fourth, final time, the image of darkness in fire; light a torch in a room full of darkness and the darkness “dissolves” into the flame, though in truth it was never “anything,” only the absence of light. In the same way, when the light of Brahman appears, illusion dissolves, as if it had never been.

After the refrain the guru sets down an everyday proof: deep sleep. How could any talk of difference hold in the single-selved supreme reality; every night, in the pure happiness of deep sleep, the living being rests in a “single-selved” experience, no second, no difference, only happiness, and there who saw any difference. No one. This is proof that non-duality is neither impossible nor mysterious, for this experience happens every night; the one task now is to keep that same experience steady while awake as well. Then a bold utterance, “there is no world,” though its sense has to be grasped rightly: this is something said after the knowing of the supreme reality. Two images, the snake in the rope and the water of a mirage; both appear, yet in all three times they simply are not, not before, not now, not after, they only “appeared” during the illusion. The world is the same: it does not remain after realization, and even when it “was,” it truly was not, it only went on seeming.

Now the guru brings the part to a close on two proofs and one practical conclusion. First, scripture and experience both say the same thing: this duality is only maya, and in the highest truth there is non-duality; the shruti says this plainly, and every night’s deep sleep gives the experience of it too. So non-duality is woven into everyday experience and stays more than a doctrine, only it goes unrecognized. Then a technical yet essential point: the superimposed is not other than its ground; the learned saw this in the rope and snake, the snake is only the rope, under a reversed name, and as long as the illusion lasts this construct lives on the illusion alone, and the moment the illusion clears it is recognized that it was never separate at all. And at the end a direct conclusion: where does this difference come from, from the mind; in the absence of the mind nothing remains. So the work lies right where difference arises, in the mind, and not in any outer debate about where difference is. Absorb the mind into the inmost supreme self, and all difference dissolves on its own.