entities, viz.  II, 4, 10, ’What is here the same is there; and what is there the same is here.  He who sees any difference here goes from death to death.’—­The following circumstance, too, is worthy of consideration.  When Na/k/iketas has asked the question relating to the existence or non-existence of the soul after death, Yama tries to induce him to choose another boon, tempting him with the offer of various objects of desire.  But Na/k/iketas remains firm.  Thereupon Death, dwelling on the distinction of the Good and the Pleasant, and the distinction of wisdom and ignorance, praises Na/k/iketas, ’I believe Na/k/iketas to be one who desires knowledge, for even many pleasures did not tear thee away’ (I, 2, 4); and later on praises the question asked by Na/k/iketas, ’The wise who, by means of meditation on his Self, recognises the Ancient who is difficult to be seen, who has entered into the dark, who is hidden in the cave, who dwells in the abyss, as God, he indeed leaves joy and sorrow far behind’ (I, 2, 12).  Now all this means to intimate that the individual Self and the highest Self are non-different.  For if Na/k/iketas set aside the question, by asking which he had earned for himself the praise of Yama, and after having received that praise asked a new question, all that praise would have been bestowed on him unduly.  Hence it follows that the question implied in I, 2, 14, ’That which thou seest as neither this nor that,’ merely resumes the topic to which the question in I, 1, 20 had referred.—­Nor is there any basis to the objection that the two questions differ in form.  The second question, in reality, is concerned with the same distinction as the first.  The first enquires about the existence of the soul apart from the body, &c.; the second refers to the circumstance of that soul not being subject to sa/m/sara.  For as long as Nescience remains, so long the soul is affected with definite attributes, &c.; but as soon as Nescience comes to an end, the soul is one with the highest Self, as is taught by such scriptural texts as ‘Thou art that.’  But whether Nescience be active or inactive, no difference is made thereby in the thing itself (viz. the soul).  A man may, in the dark, mistake a piece of rope lying on the ground for a snake, and run away from it, frightened and trembling; thereon another man may tell him, ’Do not be afraid, it is only a rope, not a snake;’ and he may then dismiss the fear caused by the imagined snake, and stop running.  But all the while the presence and subsequent absence of his erroneous notion, as to the rope being a snake, make no difference whatever in the rope itself.  Exactly analogous is the case of the individual soul which is in reality one with the highest soul, although Nescience makes it appear different.  Hence the reply contained in the passage, ‘It is not born, it dies not,’ is also to be considered as furnishing an answer to the question asked in I, 1, 20.—­The Sutra is to be understood with reference to the distinction of the individual