O Uddhava! The body, a transformation of the guṇas, the produce of avidyā, takes shelter of your ātmā and remains in your present condition. It is not your natural state because you are without birth and death. How can birth and death of the body belong to the ātmā? Even while perceiving illusions with a beginning and end, you actually remain separate. The jṣānī endowed with knowledge and realization then worships me as the highest goal. But that is a very distant goal. First, you should rise above ignorance, knowing you are tvam, ātmā. Taking Uddhava as his subject, he addresses people in general in this verse. O Uddhava! The transformations of the three guṇas, the imposition of the body, take shelter of you, the jīva. This imposition (adhyāsa) of the body, taking shelter of the ātmā, is the effect of avidyā (māyā). This is a state of attainment in the interim period (antarā). This means it is not your natural state, since the jīva has no beginning and end. You are spiritual and the body is material. The birth and death of the body does not belong to you, who are spiritual. How can you think that the ātmā is born, dies, or is happy or sad? “When I did not have a relationship with the body, and when the body is destroyed by jṣāna, then I can remain separate from the body. But for now, I am the body.” One continues existing as ātmā even when one erroneously perceives false objects with beginning and end, just as a person who thinks of a tiger continuously remains a person even while being conscious of a tiger. He does not become a tiger. It is also well known that the relationship of the jīva with avidyā is without beginning, through the power of māyā. One could argue that if the ignorance was without beginning it would mean this ignorant condition would be the svarūpa of the jīva, which could therefore not be removed even by jṣāna. The jīva’s svarūpa would have to be destroyed to destroy avidyā. But the idea that liberation means destruction of the jīva’s svarūpa is not accepted by the authorities.