Caitanya Mahāprabhu says the misunderstanding of this body identification is at once removed by performing this yajña:
- Hare Kṛṣṇa, Hare Kṛṣṇa, Kṛṣṇa Kṛṣṇa, Hare Hare
- Hare Rāma, Hare Rāma, Rāma Rāma, Hare Hare.
Then next installment? Simply, simply understanding that, "I am not this body; I am consciousness" will do it? No. That is the first step. Ceto-darpaṇa-mārjanaṁ bhava-mahā-dāvāgni-nirvāpaṇam. If you are actually conscious of being not this body, actually when, then your all material miseries are at once removed. As soon as you come to the real point of understanding that, "I am not this body," then the whole misunderstanding of material existence, bhava-mahā-dāvāgni . . . bhava-mahā-dāvāgni means . . . each and every word is very carefully selected in Sanskrit, and they have got immense meaning, full of meaning. Ah this, this, why this bhava-mahā-dāvāgni, this very word, I will try to explain.
Bhava, bhava means the situation in which we have to take repeated birth and we accept repeated death. That is called bhava. And that is a kind of mahā-dāvāgni. Mahā means great, and dāvāgni means forest fire. Forest fire. Forest fire, have you seen, any of you? Here you have got many forests, but I don't think you have seen any forest fire. I have seen. Forest fire takes automatically. Nobody goes to set fire in the forest, but by, I mean to say, cohesion of different dry bamboos or woods, fire takes, by electricity fire takes place, and the whole forest is ablaze. That is called dāvāgni.
So this material world, nobody wants. Everyone wants peaceful life. But the nature of the material world is that automatically there is fire. Automatically there is. Just like in New York your fire brigade is always traveling, always afraid of if there is any fire. Because we are expecting every moment fire. Every moment fire. Nobody is setting fire in his house, but automatically there is fire.
So however we may want, however we may try in the United Nations organization that there will be no war, oh, it will take. It will take place. And already taking place. It is . . . the war is going on. You cannot stop it. Therefore it is called bhava-mahā-dāvāgni. Just like in the forest nobody goes to set fire—it automatically takes place—similarly, in spite of our good wish that we want to live peacefully in this world, there cannot be any peace. There will be fire, set of fire, fire set off. Yes. So as soon as one becomes confidently I mean convinced that "I am not this body," then he is protected from this fire of this material world, fire, material world. Bhava-mahā-dāvāgni-nirvāpaṇaṁ, śreyaḥ-kairava-candrikā-vitaraṇaṁ vidyā-vadhū-jīvanam (CC Antya 20.12)