The only way to cross this formidable ocean of world-appearance is the successful mastery of the senses. No other effort is of any use. When one is equipped with the wisdom gained by the study of of the scriptures and the company of sages, and has his senses under control, he realises the utter non-existence of all objects of perception.
The mind is of the nature of imagination (Kalpanā), which is ever busy in its operations: hence the inactivity of the mind is as impossible in this world, as the insapience of the sapient man.
If egoism is not granted to be a mental action, and the sensations be reckoned as actions of the body; yet its name of the living principle, answers for all the acts of the body and mind.
The mind being fixed in the Supreme, becomes purified of its worldly desires and attachments; and then it perceives that soul in itself, which transcends all imaginations of the mind. (Kalpanās are imaginary attributes of God in the mind; who can only be seen in the heart). It is the province of the mind, to secure the sedateness of the world in itself; and it lies in the power of the mind, either to make its bondage or get its freedom.
On this subject there hangs a curious tale relating the legend of the heart, which was revealed to me of yore by Brahmā himself; and which I will now relate to you, if you will listen to it with attention. There is a long, open and dreary desert Rāmātavī by name; which was quite still and solitary and without an inhabitant, in it; and so vast in its extent, as to make a pace of a league of it. There stood a man of a terrific and gigantic figure in it, with a sorrowful visage. He held a club and maces in his arms, with which he was striking his own back and breast, and then running away in this direction and that. Thus striking and crying and flying afar on all sides, he became tired and spent, and lank in his legs and arms. He fell flat with his languid limbs in a large blind pit. After the lapse of a long time, he scrambled out of the pit with difficulty; and again continued to run away, and strike himself with his own hands as before. Having then gone a great way off from that place, he got to a grove of plantain arbour under the cooling moonbeams, where he sat for a while with a smiling countenance. Having then come out of the plantain grove, he went on running and beating himself in his usual way.
I rushed forward and stopped him in his way. I asked him saying:—Who are you Sir, and why do you act in this manner? Being thus asked by me, he answered me saying:—I am no body, I am here stricken by you, and you are my greatest enemy.
Mind alone is all this: and when that is healed this jugglery of world-appearances is also healed. This mind alone, by its thinking faculty, conjures up what is known as the body: no body is seen where the mind does not function! Hence, the treatment of the psychological illness known as perception of objects is the best of all treatments in this world. The mind creates delusion, the mind produces ideas of birth and death; as a result of its own thoughts, it is bound and it is liberated.
They who are established in the state of liberation, as pointed out by the scriptures, surely cross this ocean of world-appearance as their consciousness flows towards the self.