2. He who has his desires always rising in his mind, is ever subject to the changes of his fortune; therefore it is proper to give up desire at first, in order to prevent the alternation of pain and pleasure.
3. The error that this is I and that the world, does not attach to immortal soul; which is tranquil and unsupported, quite dispassionate and undecaying in itself.
4. That this is I, that is Brahma, and the other is the world, are verbal distinctions that breed error in the mind; by attributing different appellations, to one uniform and invariable void that is ever calm and quiet (This is the eternal vacuum of Vasishtha, beside which there is nothing else in existence).
5. Here there is no ego nor world, nor the fictitious names of Brahma and others; the all pervading One being quite calm and all in all, there is no active or passive agent at all in this place (or vacuity).
6. The multiplicity of doctrines and the plurality of epithets, which are used to explain the true spirit and inexplicable One, are null and refutable, and among them the word ego in particular, is altogether false and futile.
7. The man absorbed in meditation does not see the visibles, as the thoughtless person has no perception of the ghost standing in his presence; and as one sleeping man does not perceive the dreams, occurring to another sleeping by his side, nor hear the loud roar of clouds, in the insensible state of his sound sleep.
8. In this manner the courses of the spirits are imperceptible to us, though they be continually moving all about us; because it is our nature to perceive what you know of, and never know anything, which is without or beyond our knowledge.
9. Knowledge also being as our soul, shows all things like itself (i.e. as we have their ideas or representations of them in our mind); therefore our knowledge of the ego and the world beside, is not separate from the soul and the Supreme soul also.
10. So our knowledge (idea or notion), manifests itself in the form of the world before us; in like manner as our dreams and desires (or imaginations), represent the same as true to us. These various manifestations of the inward soul, are no way different from it, as the waves and bubbles are no other than the water, whence they take their rise.
11. Notwithstanding the identity of the soul, and its manifestations of knowledge, notion, idea and others; they are considered as distinct things by ignorant thinkers, but the learned make no distinction whatever, between the manifestation and its manifesting principle.