The verse that encapsulates the entire Advaita ontology: the universe is Brahman alone, which is satya (truth/reality), yet it appears as mithyā (false/unreal). The silver-on-shell (śukti-rajata) analogy clarifies this: the silver seen on a mother-of-pearl shell is not silver, and the shell is not silver — yet the silver was not entirely non-existent either, since it was perceived. Mithyā denotes this intermediate ontological status — neither absolutely real nor absolutely non-existent, but an appearance superimposed on the real substrate of Brahman.