to be ceremonially purified, and as such depends on an activity.  For ceremonial purification (sa/m/skara) results either from the accretion of some excellence or from the removal of some blemish.  The former alternative does not apply to Release as it is of the nature of Brahman, to which no excellence can be added; nor, again, does the latter alternative apply, since Release is of the nature of Brahman, which is eternally pure.—­But, it might be said, Release might be a quality of the Self which is merely hidden and becomes manifest on the Self being purified by some action; just as the quality of clearness becomes manifest in a mirror when the mirror is cleaned by means of the action of rubbing.—­This objection is invalid, we reply, because the Self cannot be the abode of any action.  For an action cannot exist without modifying that in which it abides.  But if the Self were modified by an action its non-eternality would result therefrom, and texts such as the following, ‘unchangeable he is called,’ would thus be stultified; an altogether unacceptable result.  Hence it is impossible to assume that any action should abide in the Self.  On the other hand, the Self cannot be purified by actions abiding in something else as it stands in no relation to that extraneous something.  Nor will it avail to point out (as a quasi-analogous case) that the embodied Self (dehin, the individual soul) is purified by certain ritual actions which abide in the body, such as bathing, rinsing one’s mouth, wearing the sacrificial thread, and the like.  For what is purified by those actions is that Self merely which is joined to the body, i.e. the Self in so far as it is under the power of Nescience.  For it is a matter of perception that bathing and similar actions stand in the relation of inherence to the body, and it is therefore only proper to conclude that by such actions only that something is purified which is joined to the body.  If a person thinks ‘I am free from disease,’ he predicates health of that entity only which is connected with and mistakenly identifies itself with the harmonious condition of matter (i.e. the body) resulting from appropriate medical treatment applied to the body (i.e. the ‘I’ constituting the subject of predication is only the individual embodied Self).  Analogously that I which predicates of itself, that it is purified by bathing and the like, is only the individual soul joined to the body.  For it is only this latter principle of egoity (aha/m/kart/ri/), the object of the notion of the ego and the agent in all cognition, which accomplishes all actions and enjoys their results.  Thus the mantras also declare, ’One of them eats the sweet fruit, the other looks on without eating’ (Mu.  Up.  III, 1, 1); and ’When he is in union with the body, the senses, and the mind, then wise people call him the Enjoyer’ (Ka.  Up.  III, 1, 4).  Of Brahman, on the other hand, the two following passages declare that it is incapable of receiving any accretion