The soul, within the heart and in the world

8.1.1 The teacher should say: "Now, what is here in this city, the body, is an abode, a small lotus-flower, the heart. Within that is a small space. What is within that should be searched out; that, assuredly, is what one should desire to understand."

8.1.2 If they, the pupils, should say to him: "This abode, the small lotus-flower that is here in this city, and the small space within that, what is there which should be searched out, which assuredly one should desire to understand?" [3] he should say: "As far, verily, as this world-space extends, so far extends God's knowledge of the space within the heart. Within His knowledge, indeed, are contained both heaven and earth, both fire and wind, both sun and moon, lightning and the stars, both what one possesses here and what one does not possess; everything here is contained within it."

8.1.4 If they should say to him: "If within this city is contained everything here, all beings as well as all desires, when old age overtakes it or it perishes, what is left over therefrom?" [5] he should say: "That does not grow old with one's old age; it is not slain with one's murder. The soul abides, and its Lord is the real master of this city. In it desires are contained. And God is free from evil, ageless, deathless, sorrowless, hungerless, thirstless, whose desire is the Real, whose purpose is the Real.

For, just as here on earth human beings follow along in subjection to command; of whatever object they are desirous, whether a realm or a part of a field, upon that they live dependent.

8.1.6 As here on earth the world which is won by work becomes destroyed, even so there the world which is won by mere worldly merit becomes destroyed.

Those who go hence without here having found their Lord and those real desires, for them in all the worlds there is no freedom. But those who go hence having found here their Lord and those real desires, for them in all worlds there is freedom."