Verse 20

²⁰This full knowing, dear one, with its three states, the three strands, cause and effect and doer: by that fourth alone, both by what runs through them and by what stands apart from them, that alone is real. ²¹What is not there before, and not after, and is not there in the middle either, is nothing but a name. Whatever has come to be and is known through something else, that thing is only that other. This is what I hold. ²²This making by change, born of passion, shines out though it is not there. So Brahman, its own light, shines out, painted over with the senses, their objects, the self, and change. ²³So, cutting through the doubt about the self plainly, by the grounds that tell Brahman apart and by a skilled denial of what is other, let him come to rest, content in his own bliss, away from everything that craves.

²⁴The self is not the earthy body, not the senses, not the gods, not the breath, not wind or water or fire; not the mind, not mere food, not the understanding, not clarity, not the I-making, not space, not earth; not the objects, and not Nature in its even balance. ²⁵What good could come, from instruments that are made of the strands when they are gathered in, to one whose home is well set apart in me? Or what harm from them when they are scattered? What are clouds to the sun, whether they come or go? ²⁶As the sky is not clung to by the qualities of wind and fire and water and earth, which come and go, nor by the qualities of the turning seasons, so what does not perish is beyond the stains of clarity, passion and darkness, which come from the thought of I and are the causes of the round of birth.