In plain words
‘I am getting on without remembering God, am I not?’ But that is a mistake. God is there, somewhere in the innermost depths, as the witness. You may not know it. Without God's grace, without God's glance of favour, it is hard indeed for man to live. But what is the cause of such hardships and sufferings? Forgetting God, who is such a basis, is the cause of this sorrow, these illnesses and these hardships. So we must try to search out once more the way we have forgotten.
All of you know this. The moment a child is born it cries, ‘Kva, kvā!’ ‘Kva’ means ‘where’: ‘Where is my birthplace, where is my own place?’ he keeps crying. It is in a state like this that he cries, ‘Where is my own place?’ Having forgotten everything, from that infant's heart, pure and selfless, comes that sacred, clear and true call. But as he grows and grows, he builds up the sense desires and all the bonds of the world, and so, quite naturally, forgets his own place. So it is by fostering worldly desires that he loses sight of the very thought of his own place. That is why it is when we forget God that we draw near to sorrows. Purandaradāsa said: ‘Maradu ninnu, dayunu ninnu’ means, ‘It is because I forgot You that I came and was born in this clay.’ ‘Because I forgot You, whose form is pure Consciousness, I was born with a form of clay.’ ‘O Lord, it is because I forgot You that I have fallen into these sorrows.’ ‘So grant me the nature that never forgets You,’ he prayed. So human life has not come from outside. It has come from God. What goes with us is not saṃsāra. It is saṃskāra. Saṃsāra is something to want, yes, but it is not something to love. So it is most necessary that we foster good words and good things in our heart with the greatest care, and through them turn our life towards divinity. Man's sacred heart, which should be a seat for God, has become today a breeding-ground of bad feelings and bad habits. So it is most necessary to purify such a heart and make it a seat for the sacred Paramātma. But as learning grows, distortions too grow greater.
What we gain from this learning is only Avidyā; we cannot taste the essence of learning at all. To hope for physical comforts and pleasures and forget divinity, the eternal Satya, is not man's duty. Saṃskāra is greater than schooling. More than position, it is the knowledge we live by in daily life that is most necessary.