Catch a large bird, tie a thread from its ankle to a post — and it goes berserk: it lunges right, left, upward, every time to the end of the thread and every time back to the post. The soul lives exactly like that. We come out into waking consciousness and try to get some sense gratification. I'll be free if I can enjoy. I'll be free if I win political liberation. I'll be free if I dissolve into the impersonal. A lunge, the length of the thread, the post — lifetime after lifetime. Until one day it dawns: I have a nitya-sambandha, an eternal relationship with God. Then the bird stops flying here and there and takes full shelter of the One who is the very life of its life.