In plain words
The moment it is born, this baby begins asking, “Where is my own place?” But how long does it yearn, asking, “Where is my own place?” As soon as this worldly atmosphere has wrapped it round a little, it at once forgets this “kvā”. Forgetting “where I came from”, it believes, “This world itself is everything to me,” and sinks right into it. Because it has forgotten, Vedānta warns it again: “My dear, you have forgotten the place you came from. Having forgotten your own place, how long can you stay in a place not your own? How long can you stay in a camp? Go back and reach your own place”: that is the mantra of the teaching, ‘To seek out the road is the noble intellect.’ To forget the road is itself the dull intellect. Today we are in the dull intellect. We must set out for the noble intellect. Purandaradāsa too said:
Maredu ninne dharage bande, Mādhavā… Mādhavā.
That is: O Lord! Only because I forgot You did I have to come and be born in this Prakṛti. Forgetting You, who are of the form of Consciousness, I am caught in this form of clay. I have come to this world of clay. Every believer, every jñāni, every knower of tattva has kept that aim in the heart and lived his own daily life, and again they have gone on taking Satya into themselves even in the midst of Asatya. Every single matter we must inquire into well and then do. Only because it is not so are we falling into many sorrows, troubles and griefs. However many studies we may pursue, however many kinds of learning we may master, however many degrees we may receive, we must gain what is to be gained. We must attain what is to be attained. We must reach what is to be reached. Until we reach what is to be reached, until we attain what is to be attained, until we know what is to be known, there is nothing but fear for us. What is to be known is Satya. What is to be gained is immortality. What is to be given up is the transient. Leaving the transient world, remembering God, who is Satya, we must reach the eternal immortality. That is the very thing we do in our daily prayer:
Asato mā sadgamaya, tamaso mā jyotirgamaya, mṛtyor mā amṛtaṃ gamaya.
We have not come from anywhere. We have come from the Ātma. Forgetting the Ātma, we are searching for food. We have come to search for the Ātma. If a mirror is put into your hand for you to look at your face, and then this mirror is held before someone else, how will your face appear? We inquire into what the Buddhi of others is like.