Post #543

Even in the conditioned state, the soul always remains a spiritual being. Like a dreamer who projects his identity onto an illusory dream-self, the conditioned soul acquires a false self of matter. Although the self is by nature eternal, full of knowledge and full of bliss, this nature becomes covered by illusion. Identifying with the material body, the soul is plunged into the nightmare of history, trapped in the revolutions of repeated birth and death (mrityu-samsara). This false identification by the embodied souls with their psychophysical coverings is the cause of all their suffering.