In plain words
“The Lord of all beings,” they said. If we ask where we are to see that Īśvaratva: what is reflected in pure sāttvic Māyā is Īśvaratva itself. So though Īśvara is in everyone, we are unable to behold Īśvaratva only because we cannot cultivate the sāttvic qualities. Within us we are building up the power of avidyā called rajoguṇa. That is why, in it, we keep calling to mind ‘humanness, humanness’ so much. Then what is reflected in tamas is matter. This is what we call matter. Some, forgetting even the jīva principle, go on giving up their lives to matter alone. They think, “To earn is my life's duty.” They take wealth to be their very life. Then they believe worldly pleasures alone to be the goal of their life. This is only the principle of the Ātma reflected in tamoguṇa; that is why they are sinking in ‘matter’.
So whether we stand in the principle of matter, or in the jīva principle, or in the Īśvara principle, each one can decide for himself and give himself a mark. So whether we want to behold Īśvaratva, to realise it, or to make Īśvaratva shine forth in us, we must win the pure sāttvic with effort. The changes of realisation, or the changes of the downward course, or the changes of the upward course, come to us only through the changes of these guṇas, the sāttvic, the rājasic and the tāmasic. Even for the guṇas, the karmas we perform are the very basis. That is why in the Bhāgavatam, ‘Born of karma is the creature, by karma it grows, by karma it dies, karma is God to man, karma is the cause of joy and sorrow in this world’; so it is through the karmas we perform that we build up these guṇas called sāttvic, rājasic and tāmasic; how long is this journey of life? How far off is the goal of this life? We are unable to recognise this Satya. We think life lasts as long as the body; we take the falling of the body to be death. But life and death come to the body; for the Ātma there is no death or birth at all.
So for matter, for the jīva principle and for Īśvaratva, the Satya that is the root foundation is one alone. That is the Ātma. This Ātma takes on forms and names according to the upādhis. That is why divinity is something very sweet. Sweetness has no form at all. But it enters certain things and takes on the form of that thing. We think the laḍḍu is sweet. The laḍḍu has a form, but sweetness has no form. But what is a laḍḍu made of? It is made of gram flour. But does gram flour have sweetness? No. The sweetness that has come into the gram flour is the quality of sugar, not the quality of gram flour. In the same way every thing takes on forms and names only through the difference of upādhi; this Ātma, free of upādhi and the basis of all, has not a single quality. These guṇas alone keep fitting forms and names to them.