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ShareCompared with all other means, knowledge is the only direct means to liberation. As cooking is impossible without fire, so is liberation impossible without knowledge.
Ritual cannot dispel ignorance, because they are not mutually contradictory. But knowledge destroys ignorance, as light destroys darkness.The self appears to be conditioned by virtue of ignorance. But when that (ignorance) is destroyed, the unconditioned self shines by its own light.
Having purified, by repeated instruction, the soul that is turbid with ignorance, knowledge should efface itself. The world, abounding in desire, hatred is like a dream. While it lasts, it seems to be real, but, when one awakes, it becomes unreal. Like the (illusion of) silver in mother-o'-pearl, the world appears to be real until the immutable reality behind everything, is realised.
Like space, the Lord Vishnu, coming in contact with various conditions, appears to be different by reason of their differences, but is seen to be undifferentiated when those (conditions) are destroyed.
Only by virtue of varying conditions are caste, name, periods of religious life, etc., imposed on the self, like taste, colour and other distinctions imposed on water. The place for experiencing happiness and misery, which is made up of the fivefold compounds of the great elements and is obtained as the result of past actions, is called the (dense) body.
The instrument of enjoyment, which is made up of the uncompounded elements and which consists of the five life-forces, the mind, the consciousness, and the ten senses, is the subtle body. The beginningless illusion that is indefinable is called the causal body.
One should understand the self as other than these three bodies (or conditions), the pure self, by the relation of the five sheaths appears to assume their respective natures, like a crystal reflecting a blue cloth.
Select Works of Sri Sankaracharya
