In plain words
When the darkness of ignorance goes, the Ātma is realised
The Ātma does not move, does not stir. The Veda described it as “formless, without attributes, without stain …”. The Ātma is infinite. No form whatever can be fixed for it. The Ātma is Ānanda without form. To recognise this principle of the Ātma the ancient ṛṣis laboured hard, and at the very last they declared, “I know this great Puruṣa, radiant as the sun, beyond darkness.” O people! The Ātma is of the very form of light. To see it you need not go to the forest and do tapas; you can see it wherever you wish. Just as the world is seen when the film covering the eye is removed, so when the darkness called ignorance that envelops the antaḥkaraṇa is driven away, the Ātma is realised. To remove the impurity that envelops the antaḥkaraṇa is true sādhana. Unable to recognise the truth that divinity lies in humanness itself, you imagine many forms and names for divinity and try to see it through vows and pūjās. That is why you fall into despair and dejection. First of all you must try to recognise the divinity latent in bhūtākāśa. How can a man who cannot recognise even the humanness in himself recognise divinity? First of all one must recognise the humanness within oneself. Only after recognising bhūtākāśa and cittākāśa does it become possible to recognise cidākāśa. Bhūtākāśa is a small dot in cittākāśa. In the same way, cittākāśa appears smaller still in cidākāśa. This cidākāśa is what has been called the Ātma. It cannot be described in any other way than this.
You must go beyond form
To recognise the formless principle, you must go beyond form. To do dhyāna you first settle on a form. But only when, step by step, you go beyond that form can you know divinity. So long as you have not gone beyond form, there is no escape for you from sorrow and joy. The principle of the Ātma is formless. Such a formless principle comes to you as an experience in suṣupti (deep sleep). For in deep sleep you have no form at all, no name at all; even the worldly feelings that belong to bhūtākāśa are not there in you.