the seer) has not his true Self in the body;
refers to him repeatedly as the subject to be explained (in the clauses
'I shall explain him further to you'); and having then spoken of him as
subject to the states of dreaming and deep sleep, finally explains the
individual soul in its real nature, i.e. in so far as it is the highest
Brahman, not in so far as it is individual soul ('As soon as it has
approached the highest light it appears in its own form'). The highest
light mentioned, in the passage last quoted, as what is to be
approached, is nothing else but the highest Brahman, which is
distinguished by such attributes as freeness from sin, and the like.
That same highest Brahman constitutes--as we know from passages such as
'that art thou'--the real nature of the individual soul, while its
second nature, i.e. that aspect of it which depends on fictitious
limiting conditions, is not its real nature. For as long as the
individual soul does not free itself from Nescience in the form of
duality--which Nescience may be compared to the mistake of him who in
the twilight mistakes a post for a man--and does not rise to the
knowledge of the Self, whose nature is unchangeable, eternal
Cognition--which expresses itself in the form 'I am Brahman'--so long it
remains the individual soul. But when, discarding the aggregate of body,
sense-organs and mind, it arrives, by means of Scripture, at the
knowledge that it is not itself that aggregate, that it does not form
part of transmigratory existence, but is the True, the Real, the Self,
whose nature is pure intelligence; then knowing itseif to be of the
nature of unchangeable, eternal Cognition, it lifts itself above the
vain conceit of being one with this body, and itself becomes the Self,
whose nature is unchanging, eternal Cognition. As is declared in such
scriptural passages as 'He who knows the highest Brahman becomes even
Brahman' (Mu. Up. III, 2, 9). And this is the real nature of the
individual soul by means of which it arises from the body and appears in
its own form.

Here an objection may be raised. How, it is asked, can we speak of the
true nature (svarupa) of that which is unchanging and eternal, and then
say that 'it appears in its own form (true nature)?' Of gold and similar
substances, whose true nature becomes hidden, and whose specific
qualities are rendered non-apparent by their contact with some other
substance, it may be said that their true nature is rendered man