In plain words
We must look well into this in every thought, and then put it to use.
The world is within the one mind; why should man go round like one gone mad?
said Vemana. His own reality is within himself, yet, not recognising it, the foolish man scrambles after something he thinks is out in the world. It is the working of thought that shapes even an ordinary man into the divinity of Mādhava. It can turn a simpleton into a paramahaṃsa. Man can attain the divinity of Mādhava. A man can become a monkey. A man can turn into a demon. Thoughts alone are the cause of all of these. What made the simple folk of those days become like paramahaṃsas, great ṛṣis and yogis? Only their sacred, good thoughts. Whatever form these thoughts dwell on, with that they become one. If we think bad, we go on to take a bad form. If we dwell on good alone, we take on a good shape. So, when you melt gold and pour it into a mould, all the melted gold takes the shape of that mould alone.
The great ṛṣis of those days dwelt always on divinity alone, merged their minds in the thought of God and offered time, karma and body to divinity; that is why, brahmavid brahmaiva bhavati, they too could experience that state and that course. Yad bhāvaṃ tad bhavati. As the state, so the course. So it is most necessary for us to think good, do good, see good and dwell on good. It is the mind alone that drives a man. Conduct takes shape on the ground of that mind. So the mind is very important. But the mind has a certain fault. ‘I am separate, God is separate’: that is its first fault. Though the Vedas, śāstras, Itihāsas and Purāṇas, the Bhagavad Gītā, the Brahma Sūtras and the Upaniṣads all teach, ‘You yourself are Brahman; the Ātma is Brahman’, man does not give up his Ajñāna, and falls always into the sense of difference, ‘I am separate, God is separate’. All the scriptures of all religions teach oneness alone. All the scriptures have proclaimed the one whole called ‘ekam eva advitīyaṃ brahma’. But, unable to recognise this truth, unable to see his own true form, he falls into the great peril of thinking, ‘I am the body’.