Salutations to you, tattva of a single mass of consciousness, Ātman of the world.

This is one of the few reverential sentences in the Sthiti Prakaraṇa, and its placement is strategic: after negation comes the devotional affirmation. Namas—reverence, salutation—is not a plea nor the worship of an external object. It is the recognition of the jagad-ātman, the Ātman which is the world, not an Ātman separate from the world. Jagad-ātman is an explanatory compound: the world, whose Ātman is Brahman. The world has no other self than this; there are no individual “souls” and a separate “world soul.” There is one, eka, ghanatā, a compact fullness. This reverence is jñāna-namaskāra, a salutation of knowledge, not of faith. The sādhaka who has followed the reasoning this far does not “believe” in Brahman; they recognize it as their own nature. The reverence is reverence to oneself, but not in a narcissistic sense: it is the recognition that the “self” is sarvātman, the self of all. To salute the jagad-ātman is to salute all beings in their foundation. It is the ethical basis of advaita: sarvātmabhāva, the conviction that every being is my own self.