🕉 Chapter XVIII. Tripura Rahasya. 🕉

121-22. If in a daydream a man imagines himself taken, harassed and beaten by an enemy he will suffer from the effects until and unless he dismisses the daydream.
Will he continue to be bound by the enemy after the dream is dismissed with the enemy and his blows?
So it is with the veil of nescience.

123. O Rama!
Even from the very beginning there
has really been no bondage or tie to the cycle of births and deaths.
Only do not be deluded by identifying yourself with insentient matter but enquire, ‘What is this bondage?’

124. The strongest fetter is the certainty that one is bound.
It is as false as the fearful hallucinations of a frightened child.

125. Even the best of men cannot find release by any amount of efforts unless their sense of bondage is destroyed.

126. What is this bondage?
How can the pure uncontaminated Absolute Self be shackled by what look like images in the mirror of the Self?

127-30. To imagine that the Self is shackled by mental projections is to imagine that the fire reflected in a mirror can burn it. There is absolutely no bondage beyond the
foolish certainty that you are bound and the difference of entity created by mind. Until these two blemishes are washed away by the holy waters of investigation into the
Self, neither I, nor Brahma the Creator, nor Vishnu, nor Siva, nor even Sri Tripura, the Goddess of Wisdom, can help that person to be emancipated.
Therefore, Rama,
surmount these two hurdles and remain eternally happy.

131. The mind will shine as the Self if the mind be denuded of those thoughts now crowding it, and then all sense of duality will cease to exist.

132. Mind is nothing but sectional knowledge as this and that.
Eliminate such, and then pure knowledge will alone remain. This is the Self.