It is indeed, through contact with ignorance that you, who are the supreme Self, experience yourself to be under the bondage of the not- Self From this misunderstanding alone proceed the worlds of births and deaths. All the effects of ignorance, root and branch, are burnt down by the blaze of knowledge, which arises from discrimination between these two - the Self and the not-Self (Verse 47)
Ajnana yogat tava paramatmanaḥ; so you are really the paramatma; the consciousness; you are really the consciousness, not the body. It isnot you have consciousness, it is not you have consciousness, but according to Vēdānta, you are Conciousness. It is an independent entity.
And now what has happened. Anatma bandaḥ; whereas now you are tied down to the body; the matter; now you are tied down to the matter;
What causes us, the supreme Self that we really are, to suffer these bondages, and what exactly is that, which compels us thereafter to struggle hard to regain our true divine glory through the delicate process of Self-rediscovery is explained here.
Just as a ghost vision is possible on a wayside post when there is ignorance of the post, so too, it is the ignorance of the Self in us that gives birth to the 'thought flow' called the 'mind'.
The pure Consciousness or Life gets reflected in the pool of thoughts and in our preoccupation with our mental life we take ourselves to be this egocentric (jiva), which is nothing but life conditioned by our own thoughts in a given pattern of time and place.
Anatma bandaḥ means deha abhimanah; And what is the cause of this deha abhimanah?
ajnana yogath; purely because or ignorance.
Purely because of ignorance; and when did ignorance come; it has been there right from birth; in fact, even as I am born, I find that I am born ignorant.
The sorrows of life, the limitations of the equipment, the imperfections of the world, the concept of likes and dislikes, the pulls of pleasures and pains, the shattering concepts of merit and sin - all these are effected by this ego.
The ego ends upon its own funeral pyre lit by itself, which blazes into a conflagration of knowledge. The fire arising from a constant discrimination between the Real and the unreal, between the Self and the not-Self, between the Spirit and matter, is fanned into a blazing brilliance through steady vichara in which all the effects of ignorance are burnt down. When ego ends, we realise our real nature to be intrinsically divine, eternally free and absolute Bliss. This is immortality.
Sastra alone presents consciousness as a separate entity and by the study of that sastra, vivrkaḥ means discrimination between; tayorho; between atma and anatmanoho; matter and consciousness.
And it will produce what? bodhahvanni; it will be produce the fire of knowledge. So by the friction of enquiry, the fire of knowledge is produced; and why is the knowledge compared to fire; because ajñāna karyam pradahet samulam; this fire of knowledge will burn down; what?
ajnana karyam; ajnanam as well as its karyam; what ajnanam?; that I am Consciousness the separate entity is not known.
And what is its consequence? Since I do not know that I am consciousness, I take myself as matter; that matter-identification is karyam; ignorance is karanam; identification is karyam; So, the fire of knowledge will destroy the effect along with the causal ignorance; it will destroy the effect along with the causal ignorance.
Where there is light, darkness cannot be; where knowledge has come to rule, ignorance must quit. Where the cause has been eliminated, the effect cannot remain. Where ignorance has ended, all its effects - the five kosas constituting the three bodies, the three planes of consciousness, the realms of pains made up of sense objects, feelings and ideas - must end instantaneously, totally.
Love
