In plain words
Instead, to set one's mind, one's body, one's karma and one's duty on the sacred path; and more than this, to do sādhanas, to carry out deeds that are a model for man, to attain divinity, and to dedicate one's life to the divine: this is one's duty.
Of these two powers, man sees only the many, forgets the one, forgets the divine, and tries to live out his own demonic nature and his animality. In whatever country, in whatever age, it never happens that two people, two human beings, are one and the same, whether in name and form, or in features, or in thoughts, or in knowledge and wisdom. How wondrous are the pictures of creation! Search any country in this whole wide world. Do men all wear one form? Do they all have the same strength and the same contentment? Do they all have the same knowledge and wisdom? Some difference, more or less, there always is. Many see the difference and go on spreading difference in the world. No, no! Though the power and the ability to recognise the one in the many lie hidden in man, he does not bring it out, does not experience it, does not enquire into it, does not search or examine it; man only goes on increasing the difference.
The Kaṭha Upaniṣad said that every man has a chariot called the body and a rider called the Ātma. Does any man have two bodies! Does any chariot have two drivers? At different times there may be different drivers, but one chariot cannot have two drivers at one and the same time. The principle of the Ātma is not like that. However many births one takes, however many generations change, at this level called the heart this rider remains one alone. He is the Ātma. One body. One heart only. In all there is sameness alone. Birth and death come naturally to every man too. No one drops down from the sky as a millionaire. He has to come from his mother's womb. The millionaire and the man too poor for a meal both come forth from a mother's womb. Hunger and thirst are the same for all. A rich man may eat a feast of five kinds of dishes and sweet pāyasam. A poor man may drink thin gruel. For both of them the hunger is one and the same. So it is most necessary that we recognise the oneness: that hunger and thirst, birth and death, the heart and the body are the same for all.
There are some causes for evil saṅkalpas or good saṅkalpas to arise in every man. No effect can happen without a cause. Their bond is a bond that cannot be broken. The one cannot exist apart from the other. In the world no effect is seen without a cause. But one thing alone keeps entering without any cause at all. That is Ahaṅkāra.