The Self, having in dreams enjoyed the pleasures of sense, gone hither and thither, experienced good and evil, hastens back to the state of waking from which he started. As a man passes from dream to wakefulness, so does he pass from this life to the next.
The essence of the offering is that it be analogous to the sin, and that a man offer to God his desires and passions, for this is more acceptable than all.
In thinking, “This is I” and “That is mine”, he binds himself with his self, as does a bird with a snare.
You created the counterfeit and the genuine. You appraise all people. You appraise the true, and place them in Your treasury; You consign the false to wander in delusion.
Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that, unsuspected, ripens with the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.
