In plain words
It is wholly impermanent. What is eternally true is the feeling of the heart alone. Only the ideal lived in that feeling of the heart attains everlasting life. That itself is immortality. What does immortality mean? On the snake there is a slough. When it has cast that off, how is this snake? When the snake leaves its skin, the skin is apart and the snake is apart. So when one attains the divine golden principle, this clay and the consciousness become separate. This is merely an unreal body. The golden principle is the true form. What covers it is Māyā itself. As the skin covers the snake, Māyā covers man. Māyā means delusion itself. Delusion is not something separate. It has simply arisen from oneself. When does this delusion arise in us? Delusion arises only when Jñāna is not in us. You saw a rope and thought it a snake. What is the reason for seeing a rope and thinking it a snake? Only because there is no light. Only because darkness covers it, only because of a form in which darkness and light are mingled, you see the rope and think it a snake. This is delusion. Then you shone a torch and looked. It was settled: this is no snake, it is a rope. Yet before you shone the torch it was a rope even then. What you saw after shining the torch was a rope all the same. Before the torch was shone, no snake went, no rope came. After it, no rope came, no snake went. Coming and going, these two are your delusion alone. What is, is one single principle.
In just the same way: Ekaṃ sat viprā bahudhā vadanti. What is, is one alone; it does not change. That is why the Veda said Hiraṇyagarbhāya namaḥ. In the heart, in the belly, one Divinity, unchanging, golden in colour, eternal and true, keeps shining. Through the reflection of that light alone, eyes in the world can see, ears can hear; the mouth can speak. If it does not shine within, eyes cannot see, ears cannot hear, the mouth cannot speak. But in physical science they do not believe all this. What is the reason? They do not try to recognise its reason, its season. They fix all their gaze on what is physical and worldly alone. The researches made today they consider old tomorrow. What is done tomorrow they consider new. In this business of old and new, old and new, science is becoming loathsome.