In plain words
Here is a small example of this. A young man of twenty years has enjoyed a mother's Prema in many ways from a mother of sixty years, and for twenty years he has spent his time honouring that very body with Prema, calling it mother, mother. When we truly inquire well into this, what relation does this son of twenty years have to the mother of sixty? Only a relation of the body; we see no other kind of relation in it. By the turn of time and karma, the mother died. Yet keeping that body before him, the son of twenty years: ‘Mother! Have you gone and left me alone? Who is my refuge, who will look after me?’ It is natural that this boy grieves so, in many ways. We must inquire well into the question he asks, ‘Have you gone and left me?’ But did the body leave this boy and go, or did the prāṇa go? He has the body right in front of him. If the body itself were the mother, there would be no meaning in saying, ‘Have you left me and gone?’ So it becomes clear that whatever it was that left, that very substance was the true mother, and not the substance that is still here. Whatever it was that left him, as long as it was there he went on experiencing it as his mother. Whatever it was that left, once it has left this body he thinks he has no mother; but what came and what went is the prāṇa alone. So as long as that prāṇa, the mother, was in this body, he went on treating this shape called the body with great care, with devotion, with respect. When that true prāṇa leaves this body, he no longer pays this body any heed at all. On whom was the heed set? The heed is set on the prāṇa alone, not on the body. If the prāṇa is there, this body is heeded; if the prāṇa is not there, it is unheeded. It becomes clear that the root cause of heeding and not heeding is the prāṇa alone, not the body. So, making a relation with this outer body, we not only fall through it into many kinds of bondage; through its bonds we have been wasting our life itself in a way that leaves us unable to understand it. As I said yesterday, even all this saying, this is my body, this is my house, this is my wife, this is my mother, one says from within; the body does not make such a relation and say it. So whoever one is, set apart, standing away from all of these, one is seen to be distinct, as the witness. It is most essential that we recognise such a form of Satya. Once we have recognised it, even when we carry out with this body, in this time, the duties and karmas we must do in the world, we reach the state where no fault at all clings to our Ātma.