In plain words
The Power of the Five Elements Is Limited
The whole world is a mixture of the five elements. The five elements, too, have no forms. They have only certain powers. Now let us take air. Air has no form. When that air goes into a balloon, it takes that form. In the same way, fire has only the power to burn; it has no form. When a crooked, twisted rope is in the fire, the fire looks crooked and twisted. When the same rope is round, the fire looks round. So fire has only the power to burn; it has no form of its own. In the same way, when we take these examples of the five elements as our ground, the principle of the five elements has only powers; its forms cannot be seen at all. The supreme principle beyond these five elements is itself divinity. All these kinds of doubt arise in us only because we view this creation through this changing body, through our wavering intellect and through our deluded sight. So there is meaning in first inquiring into the principle of our body and then setting out to enter the principle of God. In keeping with this, many of Śaṅkara's disciples spoke scornfully, in many ways, of the guṇas, the mind, conduct and the body, saying that the true form in them is of no help to us at all; and, showing that the search for the Ātma is the chief path in the effort to reach the supreme principle beyond these five elements, they went on completing this ‘Bhaja Govindam’. Among them, one disciple
As long as one is a child, one is attached to play; as long as one is young, to young women; as long as one is old, to worries; to the supreme Brahman no one at all is attached.
Childhood went in games and songs; youth turned into romance; in old age the worries only thickened; Parabrahma was never grasped.