In plain words
the next minute you say, ‘This is my body.’ Is that true, or is this true? ‘My body’ is something that lasts only a short time. ‘I’ has been coming down from generation to generation. It does not change. Today man forgets this principle of ‘I’, which is eternally true. He believes that only the body principle, impermanent and transient, is I.
God, the embodiment of effect and cause, is there as the seer and is in the seen too
This body is only an upādhi; it is like a sheath. I have put on a Robe. Here the Robe is separate and I am separate. In the same way, the body is like a Robe for the living being. At the time of His going, Jesus said, ‘death is the dress of life’. This is a dress: who knows when we shall shed it! Who knows when we shall put on another one again! In this way Vedānta has gone on teaching a most subtle secret. The chief thing in humanness is ‘I’. In this ‘I’ there are two: I, and this. This is a tumbler. In what way are you able to see this tumbler? The tumbler is the seen, ‘I’ is the seer; because the seer is there, you are able to see the seen. Without the seer there is no seen at all. ‘I’ is the seer; the whole world that is seen is only the seen! Some may have a doubt. They think, ‘Surely what sees is the eye.’ The eye is not what sees; what is inside the eye is showing it. The bulbs are shining. What shines in the bulb is the current in the bulb. That alone makes it shine. So too with what sees with the eye. The eyes too are only the seen. The Ātma alone is the seer. At times these eyes too become the seen. The ears too become the seen. The mind too becomes the seen. The Ātma becomes the seer. Every object called the seen, what is seen, what is heard, what is experienced, all of it is only of the nature of the seen! This very thing is described in the Dakṣiṇāmūrti Stotra: ‘All that is seen is a form seen in a mirror.’ Here there are two, ‘I’ and ‘that’. ‘That’ is the world. ‘I’ is God, the embodiment of the cause. This seen itself is the embodiment of the effect. The embodiment of effect and cause is God. He is in the seen, and He is there as the seer.