All this world is of mind-stuff,
The mind, however, is not anywhere.
Therefore, like the blue and so on in the sky,
The world is seen in the Self.

By nescience, which is no other than the mind,
All this world is a presentiment of the will.
This nescience by knowledge gets reabsorped,
Then the whole world becomes a mere configuration.

Here, what a coward finds through darkness
To be like a looming ghost,
The same is seen to be by the wise
Like a dream-world of a waking state.

This visible world results from a willing presentiment.
Where willing is present alone
Is this visible world seen, not anywhere else,
As a snake, too, when alone a rope is found.

Between the will and the mind,
There is no difference at all,
That which is mind and called nescience and darkness,
Like the magic of Indra, is a marvel.

Like a mirage, to a wise man,
The world looms in the Self,
Just as to an infant, by confusion,
A reflected image might real seem too.

This Self, like milk that turns,
Does not attain to another form.
Therefore, the whole universe, as if created
By Indra's magic,exists as an eidetic presentiment.

Maya itself is the prime material cause
Of the world, by that which is no other
Than the Maya-maker, the Self, is all this
Created, as various magical effects.

To the mature mind, this universe
Looms like a sky-forest in the Self -
Even as an unreal puppet-form
To a child would seem contrariwise.

One alone is real, not a second,
What is unreal, indeed, seems as being real.
The Siva Lingam is stone itself,
Not a second made by the mason.

 

What is not real, that is Negation,
Which by itself, as by science-nescience,
Transcendence-immanence, darkness and prime potency
Of nature, in many forms looms.

Just as for the origin of the pot the clay itself is
In its non-being, so too before the origin of the world, as other than the world,
What had no being as the Absolute itself,
Such is Maya, the negative principle of indeterminate possibility.

"The non-Self is unreal, the Self is real."
Thus what looms is vidya, knowledge,
As the reality of the snake appearance
Superimposed on the rope-reality is understood.

"The Self is unreal, the non-Self is real."
Thus what looms is avidya, nescience indeed,
As the erroneous cognition
As between rope and snake.

The senses, the mind, intelligence and the five
Vital tendencies, what creates-
That is the transcendent, indeed, even they being
The subtle limbs of the reasoning self.

Adopting as its own these limbs, the reasoning Self,
By its own negative base of errror,
Imagines itself as if happy or suffering,
In truth, there is nothing at all.

The objective data of the senses, which is the world,
What emanates forth - that indeed,
In the context of the Self, is the immanent,
The basis of all gross presentiments of the will.

As the ignorance about the mother-of-pearl
Is the basis of the silver-presentiment,
So too what in the Self is the basis of the world,
That is known a darkness.

Because of being that aspect of Maya which is a marvel,
By containing all this universe like a tree in a seed,
Or by virtue of its importance above others,
This here is known as the prime potent power.

By its own nature, because in a marvellous way
It diversifies the three nature modalities,
This aspect of Maya consisting of the three
Modalities is well known as Nature.