(veiling) does not hide the in entirety; he knows that he is; only he does not know who he is. He sees the world; but not that it is only . It is light in darkness (or knowledge in ignorance).
In a cinema show the room is first darkened, artificial light is introduced; only in this light are the pictures projected.
For differentiation a reflected light is thus necessary. A sleeper dreams, he is not out of sleep; only in the darkness or ignorance of sleep can he see the unreal dream objects.
Similarly the darkness of ignorance gives rise to the knowledge of the perceptions of the world.
This veiling is a characteristic of ignorance; it is not of the Self; it cannot affect the Self in any manner; it can veil only the . The ego is insentient; united with the light from the Self, it is called jīva. But the ego and the light cannot be seen distinct from each other; they are always united together. The mixed product is the jīva, the root of all differentiation. All these are spoken of to satisfy the questioners.
(veiling) gives rise to two kinds of veiling.
is not independent of ; ignorance of . Only on waking up from sleep, the man perceives the body and the world, not in sleep. On the strength of the present knowledge he understands that he remained in sleep also. Therefore jīva must be concluded to be the pure state in which the body and the world are not perceived.
D.: Is not the reflected light, the ‘I’-thought?
M.: He is also a ; before it also he is jīva; the one of them is related to the other as cause and effect. The sleeper jīva cannot be independent of . On waking he says “I am the body”. If all the worlds together form virāt, the body is a tiny dot in it. Thus the body is in and of virāt. What belongs to the jīva then? Only the conceit makes him claim the body as himself but not the others. He cannot be independent of virāt. Similarly,
They say that all these five groups should be unified. This they call the unity of the Five. All these are only polemics!