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towards realising the Eternal freedom of the Soul. Here, in this Sloka, the Acharya is counting upon the different stages of practices which one must follow when one has come to renounce all pursuits in ego-prompted, desire-ridden activities contributing to a life of mere sensuous happiness.
An individual who has enough detachment from enjoyment arising out of the finite objects, who has cultivated within himself calmness, self-control and forbearance, and who has renounced all his self-motivated activities, is fit for the process called in Vedanta 'hearing' the scriptures. Scriptures are text-books which explain life as we perceive and live now and indicate the Truth, our goal, through finite words. Therefore, a direct approach to the text-book may mis-guide the seeker by his wrong understanding.
It is imperative that one must listen to one text-book at least completely from a true, reliable teacher. In this transaction of wisdom, the master also uses but finite words to explain the absolute. Therefore, the student must be fully tuned up to the teacher's bosom so that the experiences of the teacher may, in resonance, be amplified and conveyed to echo in the heart-chambers of the student.
This process of 'listening' to the discourses ( Šravana) is to be followed by inward arguments and final assimilation by the intellect of the seeker in a process called reflection (Manana), by which process alone can the ideas in the textbook become the philosophy of the student. Even this intellectual conviction is not sufficient since the Hindu Philosophy seeks a fulfilment not in merely founding a theory to explain the happenings of the world and the destinies of our life, but to lift man to the highest pinnacles of his evolution of cultural purity, so that he may revel thereafter as a God-man upon the earth.
And therefore, the individual is to attain the Truth through a process of re-discovery by detaching himself from his wrong and false identification with matter. This technique of detaching oneself from the false, and re-discovering one's identity to be the Self through disciplined currents of
