belongs to the transmigratory world in the same sense as he did before, because that would be contrary to 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 Sruti 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 chain (of embodied states and merit and demerit) would be no better than a chain of blind men (who are unable to lead one another).  Moreover, the Self can impossibly become an agent, as it cannot enter into intimate relation to actions.  If it should be said that the Self may be considered as an agent in the same way as kings and other great people are (who without acting themselves make others act) by their mere presence, we deny the appositeness of this instance; for kings may become agents through their relation to servants whom they procure by giving them wages, &c., while it is impossible to imagine anything, analogous to money, which could be the cause of a connexion between the Self as lord and the body, and so on (as servants).  Wrong imagination, on