Adi Shankara

“ Through the mind-pictures built up by works already entered on, the body of him who has reached freedom wanders among sensations, like an animal; but the adept himself dwells in silence, looking on, like the center of a wheel, having neither doubts nor desires. ”

“ Thus reaching bodiless purity, mere Being, partless, the being of the Eternal, the sage returns to this world no more.
He whose forms born of unwisdom are burnt up by knowledge of oneness with the everlasting Self, since he has become the Eternal, how could he, being the Eternal, come to birth again? ”

“ Binding and getting rid of bondage have to be spoken of because of. the existence, and yet the unreality, of enveloping by unwisdom. But there is no enveloping of the Eternal; it is not enveloped because nothing besides the Eternal exists to envelop it.
The binding and the getting rid of bondage are both mirages; the deluded attribute the work of thought to the thing itself; just as they attribute the cloud-born cutting off of vision to the sun; for the unchanging is secondless consciousness, free from every clinging stain. ”

“ As, when the jar is broken, the space in it becomes clear space, so, when the disguises melt away, the Eternal stands as the Eternal and the Self.
As milk poured in milk, oil in oil, water in water, becomes perfectly one, so the sage who knows the Self becomes one with the Self. ”

“ He no longer engages his powers in things of sense, nor needs to disengage them; for he stands in the character of observer only. He no longer looks at all to the personal reward of his acts; for his heart is full of exultation, drunk with the abounding essence of bliss. ”

“ Leaving the path of things known or unknown, he stands in the Self alone; like a god in presence is this most excellent knower of the Eternal.
Though still in life, yet ever free; his last aim reached; the most excellent knower of the Eternal, when his disguise falls off, becoming the Eternal, enters into the secondless Eternal. ”

“ Therefore let all those who put away and cast aside every sin of thought, who are sated with this world's joys, whose thoughts are full of peace, who delight in words of wisdom, who rule themselves, who long to be free, draw near to this teaching, which is dedicated to them. ”

“ Both bonds and the getting rid of them are works of glamor, and exist not really in the Self; they are like the presence of the imagined serpent and its vanishing, in the rope which really does not change. ”