Mind and Ego are One

Sage Vasishtha

The self playfully seeing a body entertains the notion that it has become the body. All these that constitute the world-illusion come into being like a mirage in the desert. This illusion spreads out like waves in the ocean, assuming various names like mind, the faculty of discrimination, the ego-sense, the latent tendencies and the senses. The mind and the ego-sense are not in fact two but one and the same: the distinction is verbal. The mind is the ego-sense and what is known as the ego-sense is the mind. Only ignorant people think that one is born of the other, even as ignorant people might say that whiteness is born of snow.

Thus of the mind and the ego-sense - if one ceases the other ceases to be. Hence, instead of entertaining the notion of bondage and that of liberation, abandon all cravings and through wisdom and dispassion, bring about the cessation of the mind. If even the wish, "May I be liberated" arises within you, the mind is revived; and the mind entertaining other notions creates a body. Then there arise other concepts like 'I do this, I enjoy this and I know this'. All these concepts are unreal like a mirage in the desert. However, since their unreality is not realized, the illusion attracts the mind even as the mirage deludes and attracts an animal. But, if it is realized as an illusion it does not attract the mind, even as a mirage does not delude one who knows it to be a mirage. Just as a lamp utterly dispels darkness, the knowledge of truth completely uproots concepts an conditioning.