In plain words
to think 'I am a separate individual', and to think oneself one subject to birth, death and the like, and to happiness, sorrow and the like — this very thinking is ignorance. However one thinks of oneself, so one becomes.
In just this way, man constructs ignorance for himself, by his own doing. What enables one to attain this is the presence of a spiritual outlook, of śraddhā and Bhakti, and of Īśvara's grace. If any one of these is found lacking, the experience of the highest truth becomes impossible. Thus, when examined from the outside, what did not exist as 'the world' came to be called the world; but we know it to be so only because of our own ignorance — it has been born only of the thinking that it exists; this much is evident. That is to say, everything will be found to be born of ignorance — this will become evident.
Therefore, that so vast a brahmāṇḍa should, in the end, rest on nothing more than 'my thinking so, or my not thinking so' — this claim is very strange indeed.
That creation arises because we think it exists, and can be made to perish because we think it does not exist, can indeed be so defined; and since this can be defined so, you must ponder and sift this matter called 'thinking' deeply. With the saying 'it exists,' a thing's existence arises, and with the saying 'it is not,' that thing ceases to exist — does this occur anywhere at all in our experience? Or is it merely the wandering of an imagined world? When one examines this, unreality stands proven, at one single point.
Seeing a rope in the dark, should one, by mistake and out of ignorance, happen to think it a snake, then a snake is created in the rope's place and stands there vividly. When, by some other cause, the reality becomes visible, and with the thought 'this is not a snake, it is a rope' — with that thought, it becomes clear that earlier, by the thinking 'it is a snake,' it was made into a snake, and by the thinking 'it is not,' it was made into a rope — it was created. The directly-experienced snake was thus shown to be false as well — this became evident. Therefore, the doctrine that creations and destructions can occur in mere thinking can, through the above example, be made somewhat clear. Therefore 'thinking' and 'considering' — even though called by different names — are one and the same! These are but modifications of the mind, of one class; and because of that, broadly speaking