Impure gold is melted in the crucible and it emerges shining and bright. The mind rendered impure by Rajas and Thamas, by anger and conceit, by the impressions of a thousand attachments and desires, can be made bright and resplendent if it is put into the crucible of Inquiry and heated on the coals of Discrimination. That brightness is the light of realisation, of the knowledge that You are the Atma.

Like the loo that covers everything with dust, the desires, attachments, thirsts and cravings all blacken the mind; they have to be kept away in order that splendour of the Self might merge in the splendour of the Overself, the Paramatma.

Whatever the crisis, however deep the misery, do not allow your grip over the mind to get loose; tighten it further, fixing your eyes on the higher values. Do not allow the mind to stray away from the holy tabernacle of the heart. Make it bow before the Atma within.

Thus, one can proceed from the Samadhi of Savikalpa to the Samadhi of Nirvikalpa, that is to say, the Merging with the Differentiated to the Merging with the Undifferentiated. Delusion must disappear without even a trace; then only can one merge with the Un-differentiated. There is no duality there; it is Brahmam and Brahmam alone. All bonds of Avidya, Kaama, etc., fall away and one is genuinely, fully Free.

The snake shrugs off its coil and has nothing more to do with it. Develop that attitude of non-attachment. Escape from the body-delusion. The weak can never grasp this fact. By constant meditation on the Atma and its Glory, one can come out of the tangles of the world and worldly affairs. The Sadhaka, who is earnest, must divert all his attention and effort from the sensory world and fix them on the Eternal Brahmam.

Man did not arise merely to wallow in casual joy and fleeting happiness. It is insane to believe so. Identifying oneself with the 'I' and getting attached to 'Mine' - that is the root cause of sorrow and ignorance. Where there is no egoism, there will be no cognisance of the external world. When the external world is not cognised, the ego cannot exist. The wise one, therefore, will dissociate himself from the world and behave ever as the Agent of the Lord, being in it but not of it.