The Self-Conscious Atman Mingles With The Subtle Body As Fire Mingles With A Metallic Mass

 - and it is the subtle body which is here spoken of as bhutatman, the elemental soul. Overcome everywhere by the dark and bright fruits of action

- by the pleasure and pain resulting good and evil actions, he obtains a good or evil birth; he is born a brahmana, a sudra, and so on. So he goes downward (naraka)

- or upward to heaven (svarga), and he wanders about assailed with the pairs of opposites, such as heat and cold, honor and disgrace, born again and again

- dying again and again. This bhutatman the elemental soul, is mainly of the nature of the subtle body, and this self is as illusory as the self identified with the physical body

- The manasic perception in which the self is represented as the doer and the enjoyer cannot reveal the real Self. That the vijnanamaya self manifested as the doer of actions 

- is an illusory self will be clearly shewn in the commentary on the Taittiriya-Upanishad when introducing the exposition of the Anandamaya-Kosa.

- Thus the real nature of the Self is not revealed in the three foregoing forms of subjective intuition. But it may be asked, is it not revealed in the fourth form of subjective intuition,

- 'I am Brahman'? To answer this question, we ask, is it the Saguna (conditioned) Brahman or Nirguna (unconditioned) Brahman that is denoted by the word 'Brahman'?