In plain words
Even for God, only when the devotee's karma, too, joins His Saṅkalpa is there a chance to win success! Only when positive and negative both come together is current produced, is it not? Though flowers, needle and thread, all three, are there, how can a garland be made without someone to string it? Though the clay lamp, the oil and the wick, all three, are there, how will the lamp give light without someone to kindle it? There are gurus, and there are disciples too. Without good feeling and good training, how will the individual and society grow? All of you, with patience and in a spirit of sādhana, must take up the resolve to give the teaching. If the children do not understand at once what you have taught, there must be no agitation in you over an effort that failed. With a calm mind you must teach them, ten times over, the matter they have not understood. If the disciples must have Bhakti for the guru, the gurus too must have tender affection for the disciples, must they not?
The Word Guru
Only when the parents and the students recognise and believe in the guru's divine nature will education grow. If you hate the guru, dishonour him, insult him, will śraddhā in his teaching be born? Gurus too must first of all earn the worthiness that befits that place, by the śraddhā and Bhakti they show in doing their duty. Gokak quoted the śloka “The guru is Brahmā, the guru is Viṣṇu, the guru is the god Maheśvara; the guru is the very Parabrahman: to that guru, salutations,” and spoke on it. “You must recognise this place of honour and act as befits it,” he said. As a farmer prepares the land and plants the seed, so teachers plant good feeling, good thought and good conduct in the field of the children's hearts; this is Brahmā's work, and for this very reason gurus are called Brahmā. But gurus must not sit back, saying, ‘We have given the teachings we had to give.’ The farmer does not do that! Every day he goes on tending and guarding the crop! In the same way gurus too may not plant the seeds of learning in the soil of the heart and then sit back without a care. ‘The guru is Viṣṇu.’ Holding to their place as Viṣṇu, gurus must take care, as the farmer gives water and manure, until the children bring the lessons they have learned into practice and into experience, digest them and are content. The farmer pulls out the weeds that would destroy the crop itself; he plucks out the useless, worthless sprouts of grass and clears the field. In the same way, taking on the form of Śiva, teachers must cut away bad habits and practices, ways of behaving, words and feelings, and develop in the students purity of speech, purity of feeling and purity of action. Education is not matter for a head-load, handed up to the head the way one throws up food one has eaten: education is precisely the good feelings handed on from heart to heart. Those who teach what is in books are teachers. That name does not suit you; from now on everyone must use the name “Guru” for the Bal Vikas teachers. The guru's duty is precisely this: to kindle the Prajñāna that drives away the darkness natural to Prakṛti and gives the divine light.