In plain words
‘To seek out that road is the noble intellect’: this is the mantra of twelve syllables. Going back to where you came from. Where did you come from? You came from Brahman. So you must reach Brahman itself. You must go back by the very road you came. What is the basis for saying that we came from Brahman? In the sixteenth chapter, in the seventh śloka, Kṛṣṇa said, ‘Mamaivāṃśo jīvaloke jīvabhūtas sanātanaḥ.’ “You, the jīva, are My very portion! You are not a portion of Prakṛti, not a portion of the five elements; you are directly My own portion! You, My portion, cannot attain Śānti until you come back to Me. A child is a portion of its mother. Apart from its mother a child cannot live. A branch is a portion of the tree. Cut off from the tree a branch cannot live. A fish is a portion of the water. Without water a fish cannot live for even a moment. In just the same way, you are My portion. So you cannot live without Me. So strive to reach Me,” He said.
Today we have forgotten where we came from
In the same way a devotee said in Kannada: “Forgetting You, I have come down to the earth. Leaving You, who are full of consciousness, I have fallen onto the earth, which is full of clay. In this clay I find no Ānanda at all. All Ānanda lies in You alone,” he said. Only because we have forgotten God do births come about in Prakṛti. Reaching the place from which you came is the truth. This is the chief teaching of the Bhāgavatam. Today we have forgotten where we came from. This forgetting is our prārabdha. To know that and reach God is the chief sādhana. Man, who came to seek the Ātma, is today wasting his time seeking food. That is why they have called man's intellect the intellect of cattle. So we must do sādhana and reach Brahman. Beasts and birds too have food, sleep, fear, mating and the like, and so does man. Man did not come for these. ‘Of all creatures, a human birth is hard to come by.’ The noble human birth has come only for the sake of recognising divinity. In that very sādhana man must spend his strength and abilities to the end.