In plain words
One day a man had a dream. In that dream it was as though he had died. There he is grieving, 'I have died.' Then what was it that imagined it, saying he had gone? This too is nothing but the mind's imagining. Each and every thing is only man's illusion, not truth. My child, my son, my mother, my father: are all these real relationships, and not illusions? Bringing such illusions to birth and nurturing these illusions, he then falls into many kinds of hardship. All these are nothing but the workings of love. When the principle of Prema, eternal and true, alone is in one, these two feelings do not appear. Prema is one alone. It is not of two kinds. Love that is of the body is untrue. When one teaches it to oneself as the principle of the Ātma, that itself is true. So, if we are to recognise the truth, we must make some search. These two were born in you alone and subsided in you alone; they did not come from outside, nor did they go. Because delusion has settled in man, Brahman seems to be far away. When one recognises that Brahman itself is oneself, delusion does not remain in one at all. To know, 'Truly, there is no delusion with me,' is very easy. This is a flower. As long as this flower is in my hand, you say, 'my flower'. But if you drop it to the ground, that flower is no more. In the same way, as long as there is the illusion 'The body is I', man is subject to many kinds of sorrow through attachment to the body. Once this body has gone, he has no worry at all. Only then does he abide in eternal Ānanda.
Embodiments of Prema! Pleasure and pain are both things we have made up for ourselves, not things God has granted. We ourselves make up both, and through both we ourselves suffer. No one who hands out suffering is to be found in this world. Those who make up these sufferings are nowhere to be seen. You yourself are making up both. Both are nothing but delusions. As long as that delusion is in us, we do not know the true Brahman. So we must give up this delusion. Pleasure and pain are both delusions and nothing else. 'Child', 'mother': it is only delusion; in truth they are not child and mother. When one enters into the things of God, all are illusions. From the time we rise at daybreak until we lie down at night, these very delusions run our life.
How long can a man who is born remain as something real? By degrees it goes on growing and growing, then it comes to shrinking and shrinking. Being born, growing: all these are untrue. But taking this to be real, we suffer much. So whatever we may do, these are not truths. If you open your eyes and look, so many heads are seen. But if you shut your eyes, not a single head is seen. Where did all those pictures go? Where did those pictures come from? They went back to the very place they came from. You do not know where it came from. You do not know where it went. So we hold on to what we do not know, and we suffer. What madness it is to suffer for this thing we do not know! When you recognise the truth, 'None of this is I, none of it is mine,' you will have no suffering of any kind. We make up everything through delusions; there is not one thing that is true.
Embodiments of Prema! This Prema alone stays with us, in the home, at our side and as our companion. If this Prema were not there, man himself would not be. Prema is our true life-breath. That very Prema is light for us: Love is light. If we keep that light with us, this darkness called ignorance will not appear to us. This is the very ground of 'Birth again, death again.' What was seen passes out of sight. What passed out of sight comes back and is seen again. Neither of these is a change in the objects themselves. It is only man's influence upon the objects.