By meditation: meditation is the drawing-in of the instruments, hearing and the rest, from the objects sound and the rest into the mind, and of the mind into the inward conscious one, and the one-pointed dwelling that is the thinking; this is meditation, by the borrowing of the simile 'the heron as it were meditates, the earth as it were meditates, the mountains as it were meditate' (Chāndogya 7.6.1). Meditation is a cognition unbroken, continuous as a stream of poured oil; by that meditation some yogins see the Self, the inward conscious one, in the Self, in the intellect, by their own inward-conscious inner instrument refined by meditation. Others see it by the Sāṅkhya yoga: Sāṅkhya is the thinking 'these qualities, sattva, rajas and tamas, are things I see; I am other than they, the witness of their workings, eternal, distinct from the qualities, the Self'; this is the Sāṅkhya yoga, and by it they see the Self by the Self. And others by the yoga of action: action itself is the yoga, the doing carried out with the cognition of offering to the Lord, called yoga figuratively because it serves the purpose of yoga; by it, through the purification of being and the arising of knowledge, others see.

But others, unqualified for the discipline of action and the rest which are the means of beholding the self, having heard from others, the seers of truth, the men of knowledge, worship the self by the discipline of action and the rest; they too, by the beholding of the self, cross over death; those who, given to hearing, are settled in mere hearing, they too, settled in hearing, their sin made pure, by stages undertaking the discipline of action and the rest, do indeed cross over death. And from the word 'too' a gradation of stages is understood. Now, to tell the manner of dwelling, in discernment, on the self conjoined with nature, the Lord says that all being, unmoving and moving, is born of the conjunction of the conscious and the insentient.

'By the Sankhya' means by the knowledge of the Lord's own form as told in the Veda. For the doers of action too, the seeing comes through hearing, knowing and meditating; for the hearers, through knowing and meditating; for the Sankhyas, through meditating. So the Gaupavana scripture says, 'having done action, and having heard it, having known and meditated, he sees; the hearer too, having thus known and meditated, and the man of knowledge too, sees; otherwise his seeing does not arise in any way at all'. The word 'others' is to show the means even for the incapable.