“Brother-in-law! I know well all that went before your birth and all that came after it. Your birth is not ordinary; you were born with the divine wealth, and no one knows this but Me. Because of the infatuation that has arisen in you, you have deluded yourself within, thinking, “I am doing such great sinful deeds; I am killing kinsmen, gurus and elders,” and you keep reproaching yourself: ‘I am a sinner! I am a sinner!’ Well then! Can sinners, remaining sinners, not attain Jñāna? Even if sins were committed in the past, repentance will make them pure, will it not? Since Paramātma shows compassion to repentance, He will shatter them to pieces with Prema. Ratnākara, who until only yesterday and the day before committed many sinful deeds — was he not raised up? Did he not change into Vālmīki? Vālmīki's own story is the proof. What is gained merely by being freed from the heap of sins? You may say, ‘But there remain the meritorious karmas, do there not?’ You madman! People have no freedom to shed the fruit of sinful karma, but a man is free to give up the fruit of meritorious karma. When he wishes, he can renounce it. As a blazing forest fire reduces every kind of wood to ash, the fire of Jñāna reduces all karmas, meritorious and sinful, to ash. So, to attain such holy Jñāna, one must be full of śraddhā.”