718.  What is meant seems to be this:  there can be no river without water.  A river cannot exist without water.  When a river is mentioned, water is implied.  The connection between a river and water is not an accident but a necessary one.  The same may be said of the sun and its rays.  After the same manner, the connection between the Soul and the body is a necessary one and not an accident.  The Soul cannot exist without a body.  Of course, the ordinary case only is referred to here, for, by yoga, one can dissociate the Soul from the body and incorporate it with Brahma.

719.  The mind his no existence except as it exists in the Soul.  The commentator uses the illustration of the second moon seen by the eye in water, etc., for explaining the nature of the Mind.  It has no real existence as dissociated from the Soul.

720.  Swabhavahetuja bhavah is explained by the commentator as the virtuous and vicious propensities. (Swabhava purvasamskara; sa eva heturyesham karmanam layah bhavah).  ‘All else,’ of course, means Avidya or Maya, which flows directly from Brahma without being dependent on past acts.  The meaning, then, is this:  as soon as the Soul takes a new form or body, all the propensities and inclinations, as dependent on its past acts, take possession of it, Avidya or Maya also takes possession of it.

721.  Both the vernacular translators have wrongly rendered this verse, notwithstanding the help they have derived from Nilakantha’s gloss.  The fact is, the gloss itself sometimes requires a gloss.  Verses 3 and 4 and connected with each other.  In verse, 3, the speaker mentions two analogies viz., first, that of iron, which is inanimate, following the loadstone, and, second, of Swabhavahetuja bhavah (meaning, as already explained, all such consequences as are born of the acts of previous lives), as also anyadapi, i.e., all else of a similar nature, meaning, of course, the consequences of ‘Avidya’ or ‘Maya’ which flow directly from Brahma instead of former acts.  In verse 4, reference is again made to avyaktajabhavah, meaning propensities and possessions born of ‘Avidya’ or ‘Maya’.  This is only a repetition, in another form, of what has already been stated in the second line of verse 3.  The commentator explains this very clearly in the opening words of his gloss.  After this comes the reference to the higher propensities and aspirations that are in the Soul.  The grammar of the line is this:  Tadvat Kartuh karanalakshanah (bhavah) karanat abhisanghathah.  The plain meaning, of course, is that like all the darker and indifferent propensities and possessions that come to the Soul in its new life, born of the acts of past lives, all the higher aspirations also of the Soul come to it from Brahma direct.  The word karana is used in both instances for Brahma as the Supreme Cause of everything.