Having built this imaginary city, the king placed it under the protecting care of ghosts: these ghosts are the ahamkara (ego-principle). The king thenceforth sports in this world, in this body. In a moment he sees the world in the waking state; and after some time he abruptly shifts his attention to the world within which he enjoys in his dreams. He moves from one city to another, from one body to another, from one realm to another.
After many such peregrinations he develops wisdom, getting disillusioned with these worlds and their pleasures, and reaches the end of his wandering by the cessation of all notions.
In one moment he seems to enjoy wisdom, whilst the very next moment he is caught up in pleasure-seeking, and in an instant his understanding gets perverted, just as in the case of a little child. These notions are either like dense darkness (and give rise to ignorance and births in the lower orders of creation) or pure and trans- parent (and give rise to wisdom, drawing one close to the truth) or impure (and give rise to worldliness). When all such notions cease, then there is liberation.
Even if one engages oneself in every other sort of spiritual endeavour, even if one has the gods themselves as one’s teachers, and even if one were in heaven or any other region, liberation is not had except through the cessation of all notions. The real, the unreal and the admixture of these two are all but notions and naught else; and notions themselves are neither real nor unreal. What then shall we call real in this universe? Hence, my son, give up these notions, thoughts and intentions. When they cease, the mind naturally turns to what is truly beyond the mind — the infinite consciousness.