All this is the imagination of the mind, and the mind itself is unapprehensible.

Here Vasiṣṭha applies the logic of prasaṅga —reduction to absurdity— that characterizes Buddhist Madhyamaka. If everything is mental imagination (citta-kalpa), what about the mind itself? If the mind were apprehensible (grāhya), it would be an object among objects, not the substratum of apprehension. If it were the apprehender (grāhaka), it would require a second level to apprehend it, ad infinitum. Therefore, the mind is neither apprehended nor non-apprehended: it is agrahāṇagama —inaccessible to the category of apprehension/non-apprehension. This is not a nihilistic negation but an indication of the limits of language. What the mind tries to name as “mind” is always a mental object —a thought, image, concept— never the mind as function. When this is seen clearly, the attempt to apprehend the mind ceases, and with it ceases the compulsive projection of the world as “external.” The Haṭha Pradīpikā (IV.79) states: mana eva manuṣyāṇāṃ kāraṇaṃ mokṣa-bandhayoḥ —the mind alone is the cause of freedom and bondage— but adds the condition: only when it is sought as an object. In the stillness where it is not sought, the mind is the cause of nothing: it simply is.