In plain words
‘By study of the Vedas, by reading the śāstras, by reading Vedānta, one can come to know this divinity’: so man came to a decision. To know it, he practised tapas. He did japa. He did dhyāna. He offered worship. He went on doing every sādhana. But divinity did not appear to his eye. The Manas did not sense it. The ears did not hear it. It did not melt the heart. Asking, ‘What is the use of doing these?’, he fell into a kind of disenchantment. Through nothing at all could he experience this Ānanda. However much tapas he did, however many Vedas he read, however many śāstras he learnt, the huge giant demon called attachment to the body kept gripping and tormenting him. Then: ‘What is this body? What is the reason for there being so much attachment to it?’ With this he made many investigations. At last he grasped that this body is just a combined form of matter and energy. It is merely an instrument, nothing more! There is a power that drives this instrument, moves it, stirs it, charms it, makes it forget and carries it away in rapture. What is it? Where is it? Where does it come from? This question he went on examining again. Wherever he went, it was this same thought. A small example of this.
A Human Body without Life Has No Value
Once, in England, Aristotle was walking along a foot path in the evening. As he walked along, a retired officer came walking towards him on the same foot path. They bumped smack into each other. That one had not seen this one; this one had not seen that one. Aristotle was going his way, lost in his own train of thought. The retired officer was coming along brooding, perhaps over the responsibilities at home. At once the retired officer said, angrily, ‘who are you’. Aristotle answered, joining his palms: ‘That is just what I am pondering, who am I; tell me,’ he pleaded. Such thoughts keep occurring to those who have good intellect, good feeling and good thinking.