44. All things are linked together under the bandage of cupidity; and this band being broken asunder, makes the desired objects vanish into nothing.
45. The real is unreal and the unreal is real, as the mind may make it appear to be; all reality and unreality consists in our conception of them, and in nothing besides.
46. As the mind conceives a thing to be, so it perceives the same in actuality; therefore have no conception of anything, if you want to know the truth of it.
47. Do you act as the world goes, without your liking or disliking of any thing; and thus the desires being at an end, the intellect will rise to the inscrutable beyond the knowledge of the mind.
48. The mind which having sprung from the Supreme Soul in the form of goodness, is inclined afterwards towards the unrealities of the world; surely alienates itself from the Supreme, and exposes itself to all sorts of misery.
49. We are born to the doom of death, but let us not die to be reborn to the miseries of life and death again. It is for the wise and learned to betake themselves to that state, which is free from these pains.
50. First learn the truth, and attain to the true knowledge of your soul; and then abandon all your desire and dislike of the world. Being thus prepared with a dead-like insensibility of your internal feelings, you will be enabled to come to the knowledge of that transcendental state, which is full of perfect bliss and blessedness.
CHAPTER LIV.
CORRECTIVE OF DESIRES.
Argument. The rise, progress and decline of Human Wishes.
The Son asked:—What is this desire, father? how is it produced and grown, and how is it destroyed at last?