In plain words
guru śiṣya brahma sarvaṃ
Now, when guru, disciple and all, the three, are one, you may say ‘all is Brahman’; but while there is still a difference between guru and disciple, how can you speak of the principle of Brahman? So once ‘all is Brahman’ has come into our experience and is truly felt, you need not bow to anyone, you need not give respect to anyone. You need not live as someone apart. But until we reach such a state, you are still the disciple, and he is still the guru. We cannot but give the guru the discipleship that befits him; we cannot but serve. The basis is one and the same, but what rests on it is different. Another small example of this. There is a boulder on a hill. A sculptor sat on that boulder and made the form of Kṛṣṇa. But he took only the image of Kṛṣṇa away, built a pavilion, installed it there, and went on worshipping it with incense, lamps and food offerings. But after Kṛṣṇa had been made from within that hill, the stones left over as pieces lay on that same hill. Those stones are saying, ‘Tat tvam asi: that installed Kṛṣṇa, that Kṛṣṇa receiving incense, lamps and food offerings, is just a part of us’; they may well say so, but these pieces get no worship, do they! Worship arises there of its own accord for this form alone. That is, when we take the deeper meaning, the two, that Kṛṣṇa and these pieces, are one and the same. But when we behold a form in its outward meaning, we cannot give these leftover pieces of stone any respect at all. Only to what has been shaped into a form of its own does a feeling of bowing well up in us. This itself is the relation between Prakṛti and Puruṣa. Yet Prakṛti is one thing and Puruṣa another. When do Prakṛti and Puruṣa merge? Oneness comes only when a merging takes place in the principle of Prakṛti and Puruṣa; but while the two remain apart, it cannot be called Advaita. Only when we carry Prakṛti from its own place to the place of Puruṣa does this Prakṛti merge into Puruṣa, and because it merges, one name alone remains; there is no ‘Prakṛti’ and ‘Puruṣa’.