In plain words
This is what the language of Vedānta has called Vairāgya. What does Vairāgya mean? It is not leaving property and wife and going off to the forest. Giving up the evil feeling in one's feelings: that alone becomes renunciation. That alone becomes yoga. So if we want to make ourselves free of the mind, if we want to see that we do not honour the mind, we must cut down our desires. ‘This’ belongs only to the world. ‘This’ is only the seen. Our body too is only something seen by us. Since you are looking at this body, who is the one who sees? The one who sees, he alone is the seer. All that is seen is only the seen; this whole world of forms and names, all of it, is only the seen. So the seer itself is the principle of the Ātma. That itself is the witness. It remains a witness to everything. How? However much Rāvaṇa may play his part, Rāma is right there on the stage, within it. But he is there as a witness; they are not two, you see; these are only one. Rāma put on Rāvaṇa's costume, that is all. The Ātma. The jīvātma: the two are only one. The Ātma itself is the jīvātma. Having put on a costume, it appears as something seen. That is why, on this stage of the world-play, this jīva puts on this costume and acts out his part in a great many ways. However many kinds of parts he plays, Rāma remains only a witness. What is the reason? This costume of Rāvaṇa is only a costume Rāma has put on. Some day or other we will surely have to give up this dress. But Rāma remains just Rāma. Whether he is being this Rāvaṇa or being Rāma, Rāmulu does not change in the least. It is only the costumes that keep changing. ‘Do not doubt that He is here and not there’: that is why divinity is only one. That is ‘Sat is one’: what is, is one alone; what appears is many.
We must recognise the oneness that is in this manyness. This itself is the work that does everything. So if the ‘why’ is to be answered, it is the Ātma alone. It tells why a thing is needed. If the ‘what’ is to be answered, physical science itself gives the answer. He can tell: this is a ‘mike’; how they made it, in what way they made it. But this ‘mike’ has this steel. This steel too, how did they make it?