Swami Prabhavananda’s book The Spiritual Heritage of India provides a beautiful and satisfying answer to the question: “What is the relationship between Brahman and the world, between the One and the many, between Being and becoming?”

The pith is that the question must be answered in accordance with the level of development of the student. I’ll supply that answer in four steps:

Step 1–Ignorance: Take the ordinary dualistic view according to which there remains a dichotomy between Brahman and the world, between the individual self and an external world.

Step 2—No Manifestation: When one is absorbed in samadhi, one know directly that there are no objective experiences and there is no separate subject of experience. There’s only Brahman Self and one is THAT. From this “point of view,” then, the question cannot arise.

Step 3—Apparent Manifestation: Coming out of samadhi, the adept may formulate the teaching so that it accords with a maya theory: all appearances are appearances only inasmuch as they are colored by “names and forms.” Their essence–their fundamental substance–is Brahman. The best illustration draws from the snake-rope analogy: the snake is an appearance only, the rope always being the case.

Step 4–Real Manifestation: One, you might say, goes beyond the maya theory to formulate a revelation, or real manifestation, view: One really feels that “all this,” verily, is Brahman. This is Consciousness consciousness-ing. The experience, indeed, is that of universal, abiding love.

The answer given is intended to accord with “where the student is at.” Therefore, there is no contradiction between, e.g., Steps 3 and 4. One must remember that Indian thought is upaya or upadesa before it is, sensu stricto, metaphysical.