the fact of his being Brahman. For we indeed observe that a person who
imagines the body, and so on, to constitute the Self, is subject to fear
and pain, but we have no right to assume that the same person after
having, by means of the Veda, comprehended Brahman to be the Self, and
thus having got over his former imaginings, will still in the same
manner be subject to pain and fear whose cause is wrong knowledge. In
the same way we see that a rich householder, puffed up by the conceit of
his wealth, is grieved when his possessions are taken from him; but we
do not see that the loss of his wealth equally grieves him after he has
once retired from the world and put off the conceit of his riches. And,
again, we see that a person possessing a pair of beautiful earrings
derives pleasure from the proud conceit of ownership; but after he has
lost the earrings and the conceit established thereon, the pleasure
derived from them vanishes. Thus /S/ruti also declares, 'When he is free
from the body, then neither pleasure nor pain touches him' (Ch. Up.
VIII, 12, 1). If it should be objected that the condition of being free
from the body follows on death only, we demur, since the cause of man
being joined to the body is wrong knowledge. For it is not possible to
establish the state of embodiedness upon anything else but wrong
knowledge. And that the state of disembodiedness is eternal on account
of its not having actions for its cause, we have already explained. The
objection again, that embodiedness is caused by the merit and demerit
effected by the Self (and therefore real), we refute by remarking that
as the (reality of the) conjunction of the Self with the body is itself
not established, the circumstance of merit and demerit being due to the
action of the Self is likewise not established; for (if we should try to
get over this difficulty by representing the Self's embodiedness as
caused by merit and demerit) we should commit the logical fault of
making embodiedness dependent on merit and demerit, and again merit and
demerit on embodiedness. And the assumption of an endless retrogressive