What happens to the one who seeks that true self within? With a mind of self-control when one seeks that reality of the self by one’s own self, as this is “Me, myself,” through the grace and blessing of that intellect which has turned within its own self, such a seeker crosses the waves of the ocean of birth and death, swimming across existence. Well established in their own true form of the shoreless Brahman, they have achieved the purpose of birth.
However, the individual who has the notion of ‘I’ in objects which are not ‘I’ such as the body, mind, intellect and objects of the senses, they attain to ignorance which is the cause of two main afflictions called birth and death. They are pushed around by the very same objects to which they attribute the notion of ‘I’ in a web of more objects and bound as if by a net.
On account of ignorance, the deluded mind sees the self in everything that is not the self. Due to the lack of right discrimination, they see a snake as a rope. From that misunderstanding, they further fall with no hope for a revival to clear and right understanding. This person who holds on to the untruth is completely bound.
This power of veiling throws a shroud on that unbroken, eternal, non-dual power of knowledge which shines as the self, endlessly in a very special way within all beings, like the shadow planet Rahu that eclipses the sun. When that pure self which shines in every being is covered, the resultant delusion prods us to think of the body as the self. From this ignorant thought is born desire, anger and its concomitant series of negative emotions into an extensive activity of restlessness.
When the understanding of the true self has been shrouded by supreme delusion, the intellect takes various states of existence to be real as it pushes the individual to drown completely in the shoreless ocean of change, swirled around by the poisonous lure of many a sense object. In this way the person wanders through life, deluded and through crooked paths of darkness. Just as the clouds move away due to the bright rays of the sun, revealing the self-shining object of the sky in all its glory, the experience of the self is at first shrouded by the ignorant thoughts of the body, mind and intellect as the true “I” shines in all its wondrous glory.