A most valuable and lucid compendium of Advaita philosophy describing the transcendental knowledge of Brahman, and the way to achieve it through discrimination and meditation. Being an original production of Shankara's genius, the whole book is instinct with the prophetic vision of a seer, a man of realization, and the expression is so lucid and poetical that quite a new life has been breathed into the dry bones of philosophical discussion, and that too, on this most abstruse subject.
It is always for greater joy that you give up the lesser. This is practical religion -- the attainment of freedom, renunciation. Renounce the lower so that you may get the higher. Renounce! Renounce! Sacrifice! Give up! Not for zero. Not for nothing, but to get the higher.
-Swami Vivekananda