In plain words
‘Ekohaṃ bahusyāṃ’: because He Himself takes many forms, this age has another name, ‘Yugādi’. He, the one alone, has gone on changing into the infinite. But what is the oneness within this manyness? As a rule we build ourselves a house. In that house we build one a kitchen, one a bathroom, one a bedroom, each separate from the other. As long as these rooms stay separate, we keep using those forms and names. But how were these rooms divided? Only because walls were built between one room and the next did they become separate rooms. Knock down all these walls, and the whole becomes one: a hall. In the same way, it is only on account of the differences of the upādhis that it takes on different forms and names. When these differences of the upādhis are wholly removed, it stands as the form of the one Ātma. This Ajñāna that divides is a fiction in man. Only when we remove this Ajñāna through the upādhi does the principle of the Ātma, which is the form of Jñāna, shine forth in us. In every man this sacred principle of the Ātma is one and the same.
In the field called the heart there stands a single wish-fulfilling tree; around it a thorny tangle of wild weeds has grown; pull out the weeds and throw them away, and the wish-fulfilling tree comes into view; that is the divine wish-fulfilling tree that grants your desires.
Within us is the wish-fulfilling tree called the Ātma. These longings, desires and sense objects have wound themselves all around it. When thorny scrub twines round a good flowering creeper, it hides the very tree. In just the same way, these desires twine round the wish-fulfilling tree of the sacred and divine resolves within us and keep hiding it. When we take away this thorny scrub, then the principle of the Ātma becomes visible to us.