of bodies one after another. He
attains to thousands of births among the intermediate orders and
sometimes among the very gods in consequence of his union with
(particular) attributes and the puissance of attributes.[1615] From the
status of humanity, he goes to heaven and from heaven he comes back to
humanity, and from humanity he sinks into hell for many long years. As
the worm that fabricates the cocoon shuts itself, completely on every
side by means of the threads it weaves itself, even so the Soul, though
in reality transcending all attributes, invests himself on every side
with attributes (and deprives himself of liberty).[1616] Though
transcending (in his real nature) both happiness and misery, it is thus
that he subjects himself to happiness and misery. It is thus also that,
though transcending all diseases, the Soul regards himself to be
afflicted by headache and opthalmia and toothache and affections of the
throat and abdominal dropsy, and burning thirst, and enlargement of
glands, and cholera, and vitiligo, and leprosy, and burns, and asthma and
phthisis, and epilepsy, and whatever other diseases of diverse kinds are
seen in the bodies of embodied creatures. Regarding himself, through
error, as born among thousands of creatures in the intermediate orders of
being, and sometimes among the gods, he endures misery and enjoys the
fruits of his good deeds. Invested with Ignorance he regards himself as
robed sometimes in white cloth and sometimes in full dress consisting of
four pieces or as lying on floors (instead of on beds or bedsteads) or
with hands and feet contracted like those of frogs or as seated upright
in the attitude of ascetic contemplation, or as clad in rags or as lying
or sitting under the canopy of heaven or within mansions built of bricks
and stone or on rugged stones or on ashes or bare stones or on the bare
earth or on beds or on battlefields or in water or in mire or on wooden
planks or on diverse kinds of beds; or impelled by desire of fruits, he
regards himself as clad in a scant piece of cloth made of grass or as
totally nude or as robed in silk or in skin of the black antelope or in
cloth made of flax or in sheep-skin or in tiger-skin or in lion-skin or
in fabric of hemp, or in barks of birch or in cloths made of the produce
of prickly plants, or in vestures made of threads woven by worms or of
torn rags or in diverse other kinds of cloth too numerous to mention. The
soul regards himself al