In plain words
When we travel by bus or by cart, we move as they move. Yet even while this earth is moving at a speed of over a thousand miles an hour, we remain perfectly still. This is daily experience. Is daily experience true? Is the state of nature true? This is a matter everyone has to think over. Experience is one thing; what it rests on is another. Jñāna is what recognises the basis of the objects and things we perceive.
“What is the basis of this world?”, to strive to know this is most necessary. Our ancestors practised tapas for many years, recognised this truth, and went on teaching that there is one basis, which is the inner meaning. Losing faith in them, believing Asatya itself to be true, and throwing out as Asatya what they believed, that the moon is a deity, the sun is God and the earth is a goddess, the men of science go about proclaiming that all these are lifeless spheres.
The divine power that is the basis of all
In truth these men know nothing at all of what is conscious and what is not. The whole world is nothing but a mass of atoms. Atoms take the form of waves and, through the forces of the electron, the proton and the neutron, take on all kinds of forms and natures. That is a wall. Why do we call it a ‘wall’? Its height, its breadth, the state in which one cannot see from this side to that... Noting all these, we decide that it is a ‘wall’. But that too is only a coming together of countless atoms. And another remarkable thing - in every atom there is more empty space than anything else. Inside the atom, like the stars in space, there are the clusters of energy, the electron and the rest, but since most of it is nothing but empty space, it is not a wall. It is only a mass of atoms that are mostly empty. But do even the scientists who know this truth admit that it is not a wall? No. Is what is seen real? Is the unseen basis real? What is the basis of the energy in the atom? That is Parāśakti itself, Ādiśakti. It is the divine power of Paramātma, whom Vedānta recognised as ‘aṇoraṇīyān mahato mahīyān’.
If you bring water from the sea in a tumbler and drop a small stone into it, many ripples form and the water is broken up. If a storm comes up on the sea, huge waves rise and even steamers sink. Yet the force in both has come from one and the same source. In this bulb a little current flows; in that one, a great deal. But the current in both is the same. The Ādiśakti that sets all the waves in motion is none other than that Parāśakti.
Even in the sphere of the moon, everything that appears as objects and substances is nothing but atoms. So there is nothing wrong in deciding that it is a ‘divine form’, a ‘deity’. The whole world is nothing but the radiance of Parāśakti, its manifest form. To think that it is here and not there is Ajñāna. Holding fast to the Parāśakti that is the basis of the energy of the atom, the ṛṣis went on uttering ‘Īśvarassarva bhūtānāṃ’. Be it the world or the jīva, the whole universe is wholly full of Īśvara. Without manifesting the power of Īśvara, nothing has any existence. The individual is separate, Īśvara is separate; this is separate, that is separate... to remove such feelings of difference, to believe that all of it is nothing but a part of that divine power, and to live by it, is the very mark of the jñānī. All the living beings, objects and things in the world are nothing but parts of the all-powerful Īśvara. No one who recognises how the bulbs of every kind all depend on the main switch gives any room to feelings of difference.