Mandukya K2.16 Medley

Gauḍapāda says that first of all, the imagination of separative individual Self, jīvātma bhāvanā, is rendered upon the Ᾱtman. (Ātmā, with the help of māyā-śakti projects the waking world.~P) This egocentric idea is born with the concept of the separateness, when the mind rose up and the awareness was reflected on the mental pool of its own thought flow. ~C

Even though we cannot talk about the order of the appearance of the experiencer and the experienced, for our understanding we talk about an order. In that order, first the experiencer jīva is created according to the karma of the jīva and thereafter the experienced world is created based on the karma of the jīva only. The world does not have puṇya-pāpam because it is inert. ~P

How can projection be a series? It isn’t a series, but breaking it down into stages makes it easier for a Self-ignorant person to understand the nature of mithya. Liberation is complete knowledge of satya and mithya. If you don’t understand the relationship between your sentient jiva and its thoughts and feelings, which after all are just material objects, how can you free yourself from attachment to them? ~S

From this basic sense of individuality, arises the entire projection of falsity into this world. This is denoted here by “he imagines different objects”, where the key word is not ‘objects’ but ‘different’. Difference denotes Duality, which is a departure from Non-duality, the state of the Pure Self. We can say, the Ego gives birth to Duality, because Duality is really not there in a world where Ego is not present. ~S/G

This delusion creates a multiple hierarchy of delusions, each thickening the veil and taking us farther and farther away from our real nature and in the ultimate analysis of it all, the egocentric deluded entity in us looks out, into a self-made world through the mind and the sense organs, to cognise in its own dream world a panorama of names and forms arranged and paraded to order. ~C

First comes the knowledge of the idea of cause and next the knowledge of the idea of effect. Then follows the memory of both cause and effect. This memory is followed by a corresponding knowledge which results in the various states of knowledge characterized by action, actor, and effect. These are followed by their memory, which, in turn, is followed by other states of knowledge. In this way are imagined various entities, internal and external. ~S(N)

~text from quotes of Chinmayananda, Paramarthananda, Swartz, Sandeepany/Gurubhaktananda, Shankara (tr-Nikhilananda) see MK2.16 [&17,18]: Translations & Commentaries) for each quote's context