ज्ञानविज्ञानयोग Jñāna Vijñāna Yoga The Thread

Chapter 7 turns from what to do to what is actually there. It divides the divine nature in two: a lower one with eight parts — and the parts include mind, understanding and the sense of self, classified alongside earth and water — and a higher one that gets a single clause, because whatever can be enumerated is by that fact the lower of the two.

Then comes the image the chapter is named for, and the passage most worth reading slowly. All this is strung on him like pearls on a thread; he is the taste in water, the light in the moon, the fragrance of the earth, the courage in a person. Not the maker of these things — the quality itself.

What makes the chapter strange is how generous it is and how candid about the odds. Four kinds of people come, including the one who simply wants something, and all four are called noble; whoever worships some other form is helped to do it steadily. And in the same chapter: among thousands, one strives, and perhaps one of those knows. It promises that nothing will remain to be known, and later says plainly that no one knows him.