remains valid, viz. that it sets forth how) the unreal aspect of the individual soul as such—­which is a mere presentation of Nescience, is stained by all the desires and aversions attached to agents and enjoyers, and is connected with evils of various kinds—­is dissolved by true knowledge, and how the soul is thus led over into the opposite state, i.e. into its true state in which it is one with the highest Lord and distinguished by freedom from sin and similar attributes.  The whole process is similar to that by which an imagined snake passes over into a rope as soon as the mind of the beholder has freed itself from its erroneous imagination.

Others again, and among them some of ours (asmadiya/s/ ka. ke/k/it), are of opinion that the individual soul as such is real.  To the end of refuting all these speculators who obstruct the way to the complete intuition of the unity of the Self this sariraka-sastra has been set forth, whose aim it is to show that there is only one highest Lord ever unchanging, whose substance is cognition[188], and who, by means of Nescience, manifests himself in various ways, just as a thaumaturg appears in different shapes by means of his magical power.  Besides that Lord there is no other substance of cognition.—­If, now, the Sutrakara raises and refutes the doubt whether a certain passage which (in reality) refers to the Lord does refer to the individual soul, as he does in this and the preceding Sutras[189], he does so for the following purpose.  To the highest Self which is eternally pure, intelligent and free, which is never changing, one only, not in contact with anything, devoid of form, the opposite characteristics of the individual soul are erroneously ascribed; just as ignorant men ascribe blue colour to the colourless ether.  In order to remove this erroneous opinion by means of Vedic passages tending either to prove the unity of the Self or to disprove the doctrine of duality—­which passages he strengthens by arguments—­he insists on the difference of the highest Self from the individual soul, does however not mean to prove thereby that the soul is different from the highest Self, but, whenever speaking of the soul, refers to its distinction (from the Self) as forming an item of ordinary thought, due to the power of Nescience.  For thus, he thinks, the Vedic injunctions of works which are given with a view to the states of acting and enjoying, natural (to the non-enlightened soul), are not stultified.—­That, however, the absolute unity of the Self is the real purport of the sastra’s teaching, the Sutrakara declares, for instance, in I, 1, 30[190].  The refutation of the reproach of futility raised against the injunctions of works has already been set forth by us, on the ground of the distinction between such persons as possess full knowledge, and such as do not.

20.  And the reference (to the individual soul) has a different meaning.