al 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/ /k/a. 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 /s/ariraka-/s/astra 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 unit