Vedanta Verse 280 - 81

Naham jivah…I am not a jiva, I am not a biologically alive and mentally thinking being with a form, but I am indeed form these limitations. I see myself transcending them every day when I reflect on deep sleep experience. Whatever can be transcended does not belong to me, or is not my ‘nature’ my svabhava. If form etc were our nature we could have never transcended them. A bird, says Mandukya Upanishad, cannot transcend flying; similarly I cannot transcend my nature of being conscious. Thus my jivatvah can be transcended and hence it is not my svabhavah. /’nature’. The one who exists transcending all forms etc is Brahman.

Important for reflection:
1) Limitedness is not parallel to UN limitedness, they are not two entities. They are not dvandvas, or opposites like heat and cold. The meaning of transcendence is that we do not give up the essential identity, but along with that identity we imagine ourselves to be something else. We carry unlimited ness along with the sense of “I am limited”. We can never abandon our nature of fullness but we only move around with the apparent sense of “I am limited”. Sense of limitation begins and also ends but the UN limited neither begins nor ends. The relation between the limitation and non limitation is that of source and creation, right in the unlimited, the source, the sense of limitation is born/created or misapprehended.
Sense of embodiment begins and ends, but sense of freedom from embodiment neither begins nor ends. Right in the freedom from embodiment the notion of embodiment begins. Sound begins and ends in silence, silence itself is not created, it is the source of all sound, and the reason of appreciation of all sounds.
Even when as see the inert body as me, consciousness does not become extinct, the sense that I am the body does not replace consciousness. The relation between them is that of truth and error.

There is no point where consciousness is not experienced. Sense of embodiment is experienced, so is freedom from embodiment. Consciousness is never ever replaced by the appearance or the resolution of the world, mind, form etc. just as appearance or disappearance of wave does not replace water.

Definition of Truth is that it can never be replaced. And this verse asks us to discern between what we are, the irreplaceable Truth and what you think of ourselves as one of the replaceable details.
2) The idea that I am the body is not the cumulative effect of past karmas. Past karmas produce results in future. There is a causal connection between the past actions and present or future results. The erroneous sense of limitation or embodiment is not the result of past, in fact the notion of time involved in thinking of past, present, future is the result of embodiment. However certain past impression can impede my present understanding of the truth. If I were to believe in say god in heaven or some such thing, then these ideas might stand as impediments for the correction of error. The force of mental impression of the past can come in the way of rectifying the error about me. But when the truth is investigated they loose their force.
3) No misconception can stand without truth as underlying substratum. No bluff can stand without a truth. Behind every misconception there has to be truth
Even though the truth is un understood. One has to discern between misconception and the underlying truth.

Verse 281
We have to depend on scriptural texts, guided inferences and the universal experiences to know the truth. Vedanta Shastras are vital because they say something that is very close to us, about our very Being. They do not talk about god in heaven etc which one can ignore. I can be indifferent to anything happenings in distant America but if someone were to tell me “look! There is something on your head” I will instantly respond to that statement. The Vedanta Shastra does this by drawing our attention to the self. The texts tell us “you are suffering for no reason! look into the nature of the self”. The space in the pot bemoans its fate thinking that if the pot breaks I too will disintegrate and die. A teacher, another pot space teaches it that you are not limited but your very limitation i.e. ‘I am the pot’ ‘if pot is there I am and if pot is gone I am gone’ is rooted in space which will never die or get destroyed. Pot is supported by the space not vice versa. The pot space understands this truth and gets liberated. This is the function of the Vedanta texts.

To know the subject by reason and not by impulses is yuktya. The truth is also to be pondered keeping in view the universal experience. The universal experience is the three states of experiences, the wakeful, dream and deep sleep states. I am the seer, observer of the three states, investigation of this clinches the insight into what we are, i.e. the un negatable, irreplaceable observer, the self.

We experience of the presence of the form in the waking and in the dream and the absence of forms in deep sleep. We thus miss out on the seer, the knower, the observer of these forms. But minus oneself where is the seen or the imagined world? Thoughts come and go but the seer continues.

Having understood thus, one may continue to live a life according to one’s prarabdha and its fruits.

Thus try and rectify the error about your self by being receptive to what the scriptures teach, by yukti and by anubhava.