Page 250 - Complete Works of Dr. KCV Volume 1

Some other schools had felt that one is unfit for the higher spiritual liberation unless one has renounced the goods of the world and the pleasures and profits of worldly life. Renunciation of all desire, and objects of desire, is the sine qua non of spiritual unfoldment or awakening. Great religious teachers like the Buddha, Mahavira, Sankara and others have taught the path of sannyasa or total abandonment of artha, kama and in some cases even worldly dharma. "Sell all that you have, or distribute it, and come". Another great Guru has said, "give everything to your Guru and be possessionless, then are you fit for the great instruction". Such renunciation of wife and children, and duties to them is the preliminary condition of any seeker (mumuksu), and it may well be the final condition also.
That vairagya, mumuksutva, and nityanityaviveka are requisites is well- known, but how to get them established is a very important question. It is said that one can habituate oneself to these, but it is equally recognised that these are precarious acquisitions of the human conscience.
The view that prevailed for quite a long time is that these could be cultivated by contemplation on the transitoriness of all pleasures - or by contemplation on the unhappiness consequent on any pleasure-getting or pleasure hunting - the paradox of hedonism. Such contemplations help a renunciative mind but do not create the total withdrawal from temptations of the world with its wealth and women. The subtlest egoism such as love of name, honour, recognition do gather strength.
There is one important fact that the trainers in the art and science of mind control have slurred over. The manas or mind as such is, in the human individual, conditioned by egoism, both personal and individual. As such it is indistinguishable from the ego. The dictum that the mind is the cause of both bondage and freedom would be meaningless unless, in the former condition as the cause of bondage, it is different from the latter when it is the instrument of freedom and liberation. The explanation of the twin processes of the manas has to be sought in its basic nature as the primal thought, projected out of the Being or Reality which had developed the various degrees of grossness or tamas and which, after exhausting this movement, returns to its own condition of subtle being or sattva. The mind