In plain words
The food-sheath and the vital-breath-sheath — both of these together are the gross body; as soon as these two sheaths depart, the body falls down. Now the subtle body: 'subtle' ordinarily means 'small'. Here, however, 'subtle' means that which pervades. Air is subtler than water, and space — that is, sound — is subtler than air. A block of ice is gross; the water within it, and the vapour that is subtler still than the water, [show the same gradation]. Though a block of ice or a piece of camphor appears gross, its vapour becomes subtle and unmanifest. For the unmanifest to arise out of the manifest is the law of material nature; the spiritual law is not of this kind. It is from the unmanifest Ātma alone that manifest substance has come into being, and in the end it dissolves back into the unmanifest.
Just as milk comes from cows, so from the divine Cow that is the supreme Person, milk springs forth — the milk called Prakṛti, which is the power of Māyā and is made of the five elements. Just as cream forms when milk is boiled, and when a starter of buttermilk is mixed into that milk the cream, the milk, the warmth and the buttermilk all combine and become curd, so when that curd is churned a new substance — butter — emerges.
In the milk called Prakṛti, the five great elements mix with one another, pass through many kinds of transformation, and finally become manifest as a lump of butter — the terrestrial globe. Just as, among the guṇas, whichever guṇa predominates, that guṇa's own nature is what becomes visible, so too among the five elements, whichever element predominates, that element's own nature alone chiefly appears as the natural one. Because the earth-element predominates throughout the whole moving and unmoving world, this is called the world of the living. In the same way, where the water-element and the fire-element predominate, [those realms] are called Bhuvarloka and Suvarloka; the substances in them carry their own respective elements.
The whole world is the transformation of the three principles called Īśvara, jīva and bhūta. When it is said that Māyā reflects itself in the darknesses of ignorance, there is one point especially worth noting: a mirror is itself a locus [of reflection];