38. You are best acquainted with the self, O Arjuna! and well know the truth also; therefore try to get off your error of yourself and not yourself, as this I and that another, as also of your desires for yourself and other.

39. Arjuna said:—But I ween that the living soul dies away, with the death of its desires; because the desire is the support of the soul, which must languish and droop down for want of a desire. (So says sir Hamilton: Give me something to do and desire, and so I live or else I pine away and die).

40. Tell me moreover, what thing is it that is subject to future births and deaths, after the living soul perishes with its body at any time or place (or after it has fled from it to some other region).

41. The Lord replied:—Know the wistful soul, O intelligent Arjuna! to be of the form of the desire of the heart, as also of the form that anyone has framed for himself in his imagination. (i.e. The form of individual soul, is according to the figure that one has of himself in his mind and heart).

42. The soul that is self-same with itself, and unaltered in all circumstances; that is never subject to body or any desire on earth, but is freed from all desires by its own discretion, is said to be liberated in this life.

43. Living in this manner (or self-independence), you must always look to and be in search of truth; and being released from the snare of worldly cares, you are said to be liberated in this life.

44. The soul that is not freed from its desires, is said to be pent up as a bird in its cage; and though a man may be very learned, and observant of all his religious rites and duties, yet he is not said to be liberated, as long as he labours in the chains of his desires.

45. The man who sees the train of desires, glimmering in the recess of his heart and mind, is like a purblind man who sees the bespangled train of peacocks tail in the spotless sky. He is said to be liberated whose mind is not bound to the chain of desire, and it is one's release from this chain that is called his liberation in this life and in the next.