In plain words
Famed in continent after continent, the motherland that bore great souls; having driven out the warriors of the West, the field of battle that won freedom; winning wide renown for its learning, the land of Bharata that showed its genius; in music, letters and the sciences the divine land that showed the power of the intellect; wondrous in the arts of painting: born in the land of Bharata, to guard Mother Bharata's fortune of Dharma the whole duty is yours alone, O members!
Embodiments of Prema!
Amid city life, full of the clamour of manifold worldly affairs, it is man's duty to learn of spiritual Satya, and to come to know and revive the culture of the ancient tradition that shines in human lives as eternal Satya. Creation is without beginning; living beings are without end. The living being, endless as he is, is noble. Man, noblest of the noble, makes many efforts to grasp the Supreme Person. Some argue back and forth that God exists, and some that God does not exist, but they make no effort to prove their own arguments. For anyone at all, faith is the chief thing. Trust is what matters. Each one's trust gives that one joy. A man who has fully grasped any matter will not descend into such disputes. Only one who has seen the whole cloth can say it is a ‘handkerchief’. But what can one say from seeing a small piece of it? In today's world man grasps a little, stays like a frog in a well, and claims he knows everything. Sacred divinity is like the ocean. That very divinity pervades everything everywhere. Without such divinity there is no humanness. Even if man does not see it, no one can say it is not there. We must grasp this divine power through the many experiences of daily life. This very divine power is the support of everything. The whole secret of creation is held within it. The oxygen that trees give off is of use to human beings. This is the divine power's own arrangement. A man may talk for years on end, yet the power within him does not run down the way the current in a radio is used up; this divine power itself is the cause of that too. This divinity itself is the Ātma principle in everything. On this very ground it is said that God is in the atom as the atom, and in the vast as the vast. But man can see neither the atom nor the vast. How can man, who cannot see the air that pervades all around him, see the many atoms within it? The sun is far bigger than the earth. It is 95 crore miles away. Travelling by plane at 500 miles an hour for 200 years, we could reach the sun. There are many thousands of such solar systems. Being so far away, it looks very small, yet its form is immense. The distance between two stars is 35 crore miles. In such a state of things, how could we see many crores of stars and many crores of suns at once? That is why we cannot see even the vast form. As the saying goes, ‘Have no doubt that He is here and not there: the Bearer of the discus is present everywhere’; there is no place where the Godhead is not. The Satya that lies beyond the darkness of Ajñāna is itself God. For every Dharma, Satya is the chief thing. By the science of chemistry, lime mixed with turmeric turns into a red dye. A bit of needle grows longer with heat. Each substance appears as a Satya of its own. Wherever we look, people speak of the atom. But, truth is more fundamental than atom. The Paramātma dwells in the form of the atom. The whole world is filled with atoms. The people of Bhārata drove out the darkness of their Ajñāna, developed their feelings, their citta and their Manas, and grasped the Satya that Īśvara pervades the whole world. Where there is air, light and selflessness, there is purity. Where there is Ajñāna and darkness, there the great ghosts gather. Since ancient times there have been efforts to drive out this darkness of Ajñāna, but they have not been the right ones. For example, if you wash charcoal with water and soap to make it white, you gain nothing. Keep it in the fire without a break and it turns white. That alone is the right way. Today every man must become the master of the house, not its servant. The master knows the precious things in the house; how would a servant know them? In the same way, we must search out and take hold of the precious gems of right knowledge and Prajñāna in the temple of our heart. Merely eating, earning money, a craving for pleasures, and then one day leaving life behind: that is not the goal of life. Time rushes on like a raging gale. Life melts away like snow. Man closes his eyes for good without recognising his duty or his goal. As long as he lives, selfishness and anxieties make him prey to many sorrows. So man must recognise the oneness in what is natural, and the divinity in that oneness. We must cultivate expansiveness. Ants and crows set selfishness aside and share whatever they find. But man, in his selfishness, forgets the good of others. If human beings take to heart the principle of ‘I am One; may I become many’, true Ānanda will come. We must grasp that what we call ‘I’ is not with Me alone, but in everyone as well. We must grasp through sādhana the divinity in such oneness. Food, sleep, sex and the like are common to men and to beasts, but among the beasts there is a reason and a season.