31. There is no appetence nor pleasure, nor any desire or error in him, who relies his dependence in the Supreme; for how can one have any desire or error in himself who lives in the Supreme self, who is devoid of them? 32. The whole is a form of the Supreme soul, and all things are but forms of the same; and the mind also is a form of it, as a golden ornament is but a form of the gold. 33. The mind which is ignorant of its Supreme origin, is called the living soul; which from its ignorance of the Supreme soul, resembles a friend who has alienated himself from his true friend. 34. The mind which is misled by its ignorance of the all-intelligent God, to imagine its own personality as a reality; is as one who believes his living soul to be the production of vacuum; (or as something produced from nothing). 35. The living soul although it is a particle of the Supreme soul, shows itself in this world as no soul at all (but a form of mere physical vitality). So the purblind see two moons in the sky, and are unable to distinguish the true moon from the false one. 36. So the soul being the only real entity, it is improper to speak of its bondage and liberation; and the imputation of error to it, is quite absurd in the sight of lexicographers, who define it as infallible. 37. It is a wrong impression to speak of the bondage of the soul, which is ever free from bonds; and so it is untrue to seek the emancipation of the soul, which is always emancipate. 38. Ráma asked:—The mind is known sometimes to arrive at a certainty, which is changed to uncertainty at another; how then do you say that the mind is not under the bondage of error? 39. Vasishtha answered:—It is a false conceit of the ignorant to imagine its bondage; and their imagination of its emancipation, is equally a false conception of theirs. 40. It is ignorance of the _smriti sástra_, that causes one to believe in his bondage and emancipation; while in reality there are no such things as bondage and liberation. 41. Imagination represents an unreality as reality, even to men of enlightened understandings; as a rope presents the appearance of a snake even to the wise. 42. The wise man knows no bondage or liberation, nor any error of any kind: all these three are only in the conceptions of the ignorant. 43. At first the mind and then its bondage and liberation, and afterwards its creation of the unsubstantial material world, are all but fabulous inventions that have come into vogue among men, as the story of the boy of old (or as the old grand-mother’s tale). Note—The conclusion of this chapter concerning the negation of bondage and liberation of the soul, and its error and enlightenment &c., rests on the text of a Sruti; which negates everything in the sight of one who has come to the light of the universal soul. The passage is:— न निरोधो नचोत्पत्तिः ननवद्धो नच साधकः । ममुक्षर्णबै मुक्त इत्येषा परमार्थताः CHAPTER CI.