In plain words
It is the power of these saṅkalpas that shapes even an ordinary man into Mādhava. The unlettered man can be changed into a paramahaṃsa; man can attain the nature of Mādhava. Man can become a monkey; man can turn into a demon. Our saṅkalpas alone are the cause of all this. What made the simple folk of those days into paramahaṃsas, maharṣis and yogis? Their own sacred good saṅkalpas! Whatever form the saṅkalpas dwell on, they come into oneness with that form. By willing what is bad, we take on a bad form. By dwelling only on the good, we take on a good shape. When gold is melted and poured into a mould, it takes on the very shape of the mould. The maharṣis of those days dwelt on God alone without ceasing, and made the mind merge in God alone. Precisely because they offered time, karma and body to divinity, they too, as ‘Brahmavit brahmaivabhavati’ says, could experience that state and that end. ‘Yadbhāvaṃ tadbhavati’: ‘As the state, so the end.’ So it is essential that we do good, see good, think good and dwell on good. Manas is what drives man! Conduct takes shape from that very Manas. So Manas is very important. But Manas has a certain kind of defect. Its first defect is the very Ajñāna that says ‘I am separate’, ‘God is separate’.
Though the Vedas, the śāstras, the itihāsas and the Purāṇas, the Bhagavad Gītā, the Brahmasūtras and the Upaniṣads too teach ‘You yourself are Brahman; the Ātma itself is Brahman,’ man does not give up his Ajñāna, and without ceasing falls prey to the sense of difference that says ‘I am separate, God is separate.’ They have kept making known the form of the whole, saying ‘Ekaṃ eva advitīyaṃ brahma.’ All the scriptures of the religions too teach oneness alone. But unable to recognise this truth, unable to see his own true form, he falls into the feeling that the body itself is he, and comes to harm.