Mandukya K2:12 Medley

Generally the theory of Māṇḍūkya-upaniṣad or the thesis developed in the Kārikā is that the seemingly created world is a mere delusion, unreal and illusory in all the three periods of time.

Gauḍapāda has condescended to descend to our level of perception and recognising therein a pluralistic world, has explained to us how it must have risen up from our own delusions.

The answer is whoever is projecting the dream world is the same one that projects the waking world also. The dreamer does not need anything else external to himself other than nidrā-śakti for projecting the dream world.

The dreamer starts his career the moment he forgets himself. This capacity to forget himself and to project outward into a world of experienced objects is not a faculty that has reached him from anywhere else but it is an inherent capacity.

Therefore, ātmā alone projects out of itself the waking world with the help of ātmā itself. Other than māyā-śakti, ātmā does not need anything else for this projection. Where does māyā come from? Gauḍapāda says that it is already there in ātmā similar to the nidrā-śakti.

It is like the imagining of a snake in a rope. It is the Self that imagines both the snake and its perceiver. This Self is the substratum of both knowledge and memory. Therefore the conclusion of Vedanta is quite unlike the view of certain nihilists.

Vedanta is not solipsism. The individual ego does not create the universe. Both come into existence together. The jiva, Isvara, and the world, all conjured up by maya, last as long as maya lasts.

The projection does not amount to duality, because it has no effect on the Self, just as a movie has no impact on the screen. So we say that the Self is an experienceless experiencer, or a non-experiencing witness. 

When the Self-realized Self experiences objects, it knows that the objects are a projection and that the projection depends on it, so it knows that it is only ever experiencing itself, with or without the presence of objects.

Finally, Gaudapada says "this is the conclusion of Vedanta,” meaning it is not his conclusion, although he has fully assimilated Vedanta’s conclusion.

~text from quotes of Chinmayananda, Nikhilananda, Paramarthananda, Swartz (see The Famous MK2.12: Some Translations & Commentaries for each quote's context)