Baba asked Deshmukh to translate this into Marathi. Deshmukh hesitated on the grounds that it was a difficult task as the passage dealt with philosophy. Baba corrected him:
Do not take this as a philosophical passage. It is not philosophy! It depicts Life Perennial. This is the life expected of a real man. The life that you lead is the life of an animal! It portrays nothing but animality.
One may be an intellectual genius, but unless he realizes the Truth, his so-called knowledge is a play of words in ignorance. His interpretations of life and the commentaries on Truth can lead one only as far and as much as one blind man leading another.
What is the picture of life in general? At first you are a child absorbed in games. Then you grow young and pretty, become lost in youthful reveries and in course get married. You have children. As you grow old, the worries pile up and get multiplied. Old age with all its inevitable weaknesses draws nearer each day, when finally with an unsatisfied feeling you have to leave the gross body. Can you call this a life worth living? Is it much different from the life of an elephant?
I know your innumerable incarnations wherein the self-same story is repeated over and over again. Remember, this is all a dream, but a significant dream. Its purpose is to make you aware of the nothingness of the dream itself. But you are so overpowered by ignorance and the self-sown illusory worries that you do not wake up to the situation, and do not firmly resolve to lead the life of a real man.
In the couplets, Hafiz gives an indication of Life Perennial. This is the life one should aim at. It is for this life that you have a human form. And unless you decide to live Life Perennial now and make sincere efforts to do so, all previous human forms, so to speak, are likened to those of animals. So only the life of love (for God) leading to Life Perennial is worth living. One who loves God has only one longing, one worry, and that is, to become One with God. This is the Real Life which leads the lover to the Everlasting Life.
Lord Meher, Original Publication, Bhau Kalchuri, Vol. 17, p. 5763.