In plain words
And so, for founding colleges, since in this world not even the smallest work can go forward without money, they resolved, with lofty intentions and pure hearts, that when each person gave 50 rupees once in a lifetime, all of it would be made into a fund to develop institutions of education and institutions of health. The committee brought a decision of this kind and handed it to Me.
To that I gave this answer: “My dear! Do not set about collecting quietly from one another with only the thought, ‘Money will come in, won't it?’ Announce it openly; it is good to follow a path that leaves no room for doubt of any kind, for the world, for the government or for any person,” I counselled them. So on that day they made an announcement, a public declaration.
Seizing on this, many people, inventing meanings and inventing nothing but mischief, went on spreading this one rumour too: ‘They will spend 50 lakhs to celebrate Swami's birthday.’
Truly, if they were spending 50 lakh rupees in waste on a birthday, or on personal pleasure of any other kind, there is no greater sin than that. At a time when there are crores upon crores of people in the world without food, without homes, going through many hardships, if they spent 50 lakhs on one person's birthday, there is no greater sin than this, no greater misuse than this; I will never on any day have a hand in such a thing.
Not only that: for a Śivarātri held in Prasanthi Nilayam, or for a Navarātri, never on any day is there misuse, even in small measure, on the part of our Prasanthi Nilayam. Many may think, ‘Lakhs were spent here at the great Dasara festival’; but apart from the work that all of them, every one, do wholeheartedly with their own bodies, we have not had the expense of even one naya paisa. The ṛtviks who come, and the speakers who give the talks, all came to Prasanthi Nilayam only out of Prema. Because it is done in this way, whatever is arranged for anyone's comfort of any kind, the Seva Dal, the Seva Samiti and the volunteers do all of it with their whole heart, offering up their own bodies in the work; apart from that not a naya paisa at all is spent on them. If today you find our Prasanthi Nilayam so clean a place, who is the cause of it, and how many sweepers have we engaged? How many labourers have we engaged? None at all. Each and every one cleans their own places and grounds themselves, and that is all.