In plain words
One who frets and strains after enjoyment has his attention only on the five elements, the five sheaths and the five senses. Unlike him, only one who has come to know, ‘The body is impermanent; the mind is a fickle monkey,’ has the vision of the Ātma. If we look at the body, it is a bubble of water. Even knowing that it is impermanent, you live trusting in it alone. As long as attachment to the body remains, the whole of life is bound to be nothing but suffering, with troubles and losses, pleasures and pains, sins and merits.
The body is made of the five elements; the body cannot but fall, whenever it may be; the indweller is free of all ill; if you weigh it, for the indweller birth and death and the seals of delusion's fetters and bonds are not there; seen in truth, that indweller is the God of gods; weigh it in your mind: He has the Ātma for His form!
What is called the ‘indweller’ alone is steady. That very one they called the ‘Ātma’. The name of the body is what your mother and father gave. All the people call you by this name. Some names are needed in order to identify bodies. ‘Anil Kumar’ stands for his form. The name ‘Sathya Sai Baba’ points to this body. Without names we could not identify forms. Man lives in the outer world, and for that very reason they have gone on fixing such physical marks. But all of these are only fancies built on what is seen. What we cannot see, that alone is Satya. That alone is the Ātma. So, when you are asked, ‘Who are you?’ you must say, ‘I am the Ātma.’ The name of the body is not what matters to us. These forms and names are impermanent. Only as long as we are in this world are they of any use. Once we leave the world, no one recognises them. There was a millionaire. He had money in heaps and piles, in plenty. The time of his death drew near. He was in great pain. All the relatives around him were weeping. At that moment wisdom dawned on him. Ādi Śaṅkara said, ‘Birth again, death again, lying again in a mother's womb.’ This lasts only as long as the body is there. ‘After that, no one will so much as look at it, will they?’ So he came to his senses. ‘Ah! All the wealth I earned I have handed over to you alone. The mansions and houses I built I have handed over to you alone. My bank deposit, all of it, I have handed over to you alone. Even so, with no thought for what my state is now, you look only to your own future,’ he wailed. Everyone, as long as he is in the world, looks only to worldly property and possessions. But where the life-breath goes, they give not the least thought. As long as the body is there, we only imagine that this belongs to our body, belongs to our mind. Now you are sitting here. By the time you rise and take two steps, what your state will be is not known. Once the body has died, who is bound to whom? A tie to which friends? A tie to which relatives? There is a tie to no one at all. So we must not keep the body alone as our chief aim. We must purify the body through good deeds. Because we form many kinds of ties with this world, many impurities keep gathering. Only when we wash away that impurity to some extent does health come right. The other day the rains came. Because of the rains, all the water turned to pollution. Many people drank that polluted water and caught fevers. Wherever you look, there are troubles, losses, sorrows and griefs. The reason for this is that pollution has got into the food we eat, or the water we drink, or the air we breathe.