In plain words
Merely because the three, icchāśakti, jñānaśakti and kriyāśakti, are there, this task is not wholly accomplished. A small example of this: 1. There are flowers, a needle and thread: will a garland come about by itself? 2. There are a lamp-bowl, oil and a wick: will the light of a lamp come about? There has to be someone to string them together. There has to be someone to put them together. Without this person, getting these three is of no use. So you may try to make something with the three, icchāśakti, jñānaśakti and kriyāśakti. But there has to be someone who does it. When that someone who does it is not there, there is no use at all. 3. There is gold, there are gems. Will ornaments get made? There has to be a goldsmith to make them, surely!
God Alone Is the Upādāna Agent
Two causes. These are what are called the two causes, the upādāna kāraṇa and the nimitta kāraṇa. The one who is master of everything is the upādāna kāraṇa. There has to be a kriyā kāraṇa as well. This kriyā agent keeps holding up an ideal to the physical world. A goldsmith creates many kinds of ornaments. But who created the gold? He who created this gold is precisely the upādāna agent. The one who created an ornament out of this gold is precisely the kriyā agent. Who created the cotton? God created it. The one who makes it into thread and then into cloth is a weaver. So the nimitta agent stands as an ideal to the world. The goldsmith is the nimitta agent. But if God Himself, the upādāna kāraṇa, were not there, this nimitta agent could do nothing. God Himself, the upādāna agent, created the whole world. Man, the nimitta agent, is trying to enjoy this world that was created. Today they have forgotten the upādāna agent. Believing that the nimitta agent alone is what counts, they fall prey to the Ahaṅkāra that says, “I did it, I saw it, I said it.” Only when there is a substance at the root can this nimitta agent create and conceive things of many kinds.