In plain words
This Manas is something imagined. At one time it takes one form, at another another. It follows the senses alone. Only through its union with the senses does it experience pleasure and pain. Pleasure and pain, gain and loss, blame and praise: Manas experiences them, not the Ātma. So these are forms Manas has imagined. If we watch the nature of the mind a little, the Ātma-principle becomes clear to us. What exists is one alone. That is the Ātma. What is everywhere is the Ātma. All things are the Ātma. Only because we have lost that vision of advaita do we fall into sorrows with this vision of dvaita.
In every matter man tries first of all to recognise himself. If you ask, “What are you living for?”, the answer comes, “I live for myself.” If you ask, “How is it that you answer, ‘I live for myself’?”: “I sleep for my own sake, I eat for myself. I live for my own sake,” he says. If someone else eats, my hunger is not satisfied. If my leg breaks and someone else binds his, my leg is not set right. Even if the two of us lie on one bed, my dream is mine and his dream is his. On this ground he answers to everything, “I alone.” After he has travelled some distance, somewhere a friend meets him: “Ayyā! Let us go somewhere on a pilgrimage; come.” When the friend says this: “Ayyo! I cannot take leave from the office. At home the children and my wife will have a very hard time. No one can protect them. I cannot come now,” he says. Then when you ask the same man why he does a job, he says, “I must bring up my wife and children.” The man who said a while ago, “I live for myself”, now says, “I live for my family.” He says that he lives for himself and for his family. Many think they experience life as their goal through these two ties alone. No. No. There is another, a third. That is society. That is the world. Whatever suffering comes to anyone in the world, it concerns me too. Only when my country is well am I well. When my society meets with troubles of many kinds, the eight hardships, I am one among those eight hardships too. Only when my village is well am I well too. No one may wish, “Let the village go to ruin, so long as I am well.” Even if he wishes it, he cannot live. One who is born in society, grows up in society and lives in society cannot live even a single moment keeping society away. I live for the sake of society. In short, only when society is well is one's family well. Only when one's family is well is one happy.