> _Abhinavagupta’s summary verses for Chapter Four_ A bound soul who has any of these convictions—‘I am dense, I am inert matter,’ or ‘I am completely bound by my _karma_,’ or ‘I am impure,’ or ‘I am a pawn of others’—may seek to attain the steady conviction of the opposite of these views. If s/he succeeds in this, s/he immediately becomes the Lord whose body is the whole universe and whose soul is Consciousness. || 8 [4.1] > In whatever manner such a conviction may be attained, a Tantrik yogi should cultivate it at all times. He should not allow his perspective to become divorced from the real nature of things and thus be led into doubt by the mass of foolish teachings in the world. || 9 [4.2] ’I am’ is a claim that contains levels of potency, impulse, emotion, symbols, concepts, rules. Which is why in tantra impulses are not seen as anything but what precondition all pathos, mythos and logos, that is to say all narratives from emotion to rules that might condition us to act in an contracted and unfree way. ‘I am dense’ is not true because that’s not my felt sense of the situation at all. ‘I am inert matter’ is not true I am convinced I’m both enminded and embodied in a broad sense of these two words. ‘I am completely bound by my _karma_’ are not true that would be logos only who might think that. ‘I am impure’ are not true but might need clarification. ‘I am a pawn of others’ i do regretfully believe this to be the case, but there is no basis for that greaf. > The liberating _vikalpa_ cited above is liberating **only** if it engenders a process of contemplation (_bhāvanā-krama_) that is empowered by three key factors: access to an authentic lineage-based tradition (_sad-āgama_), instruction by a ‘true teacher’ or a ‘teacher of Reality’ (_sad-guru_), and rarest of all, the capacity to exercise sound reasoning & discernment (_sat-tarka_), which will be explained further in the rest of [Chapter Four](https://hareesh.org/blog/2019/4/20/why-yoga-doesnt-work-and-why-it-does-tantrasaara-chapter-four-part-2). https://hareesh.org/tantrasara-blog-posts