1. Now the sign of that perfect disciple who does not return again to a body is this:
2. You find the spouse in the house with him is just like a stranger; his house also passes with him like the inns, while he says: “I dwell in a house rented for some days and months!”
3. His brothers and relatives are counted by him as seeming to be strangers who need him and travel with him on the road while he journeys.
4. Perhaps they will soon separate from him and each one goes his own way.
5. Gold and silver and the earthenware vessels for the house are to him like borrowed utensils.
6. He takes them and they follow him, afterwards, he returns them to their owner.
7. He does not set his heart and his treasure upon them.
8. He has uprooted his thought out of the world and set his heart in the Holy Assembly.
9. At every moment his thought* is fixed on his Creator.
*(The true disciple has only one goal)
10. But he, who surpasses all of this, in whom there are care, concern, attention and love for the holy ones, he looks after the Assembly as after his own house – indeed more than his own house.
11. He has set his whole treasure in the Assembly.
12. This is the sign of those disciples who are not re-embodied.
13. Again there are others retaining purity and keeping all flesh far from their mouths*, being daily zealous for fasting and prayer, helping the Assembly with alms as far as comes to their hands.
*(carnal speech)
14. In them evil deeds no longer exist because the steps of their feet are turned to the Assembly more than to their house; their heart is always upon it.
15. Their sitting and their rising is like that of the holy ones; they have put away all matters of the world out of their heart.
16. Now such a man, the mind fixed in the Holy Assembly, gives wholly his heart at every moment, with his gifts and fasts and reverences, and the graces which benefit his life, to the Holy Assembly for those who come into the Assembly.
17. He rejoices exceedingly over these and loves them, putting his whole treasure on them.