In plain words
Grown-ups have no such Śānti and Ānanda, do they? What is the reason? As they grow and become adults, they fall under the sway of the senses, build up the many in their lives, live in unrest, lose their purity, become slaves to weakness, and sorrow is all that grows. The gaze of grown-ups rests only on the world, a thing fashioned of what is seen. For a joy that is had for a moment, they fall into ceaseless striving with endless eagerness, run after the senses and lay their lives waste. Just because cleverness grows, they see only the many in the One. As the saying goes, ‘Muṇḍe muṇḍe matir bhinnāḥ’, feelings of difference, differing opinions and fancies multiply, and divine qualities such as purity, divinity and oneness decline. The body is one whole; if we split it into belly, hand, eye and ear and tend it with an eye for the many, nothing is gained; we need to see how these are bound together and act on it.
The form that unites all three, the body, individuals and living beings, is the Ātma! Scientists take up new lines of research with a narrow outlook and, over the small results they catch, deceive themselves that they have won a great victory. With these little results, the littleness of their Buddhi keeps growing too. Doctors cut the body into pieces, bones, ear, nose, throat, heart, stomach, skin, and prescribe for each its own separate remedy.
Devotees are just the same. Most of them are schemers and pleasure-seekers! In a contest where each wants first place in Ajñāna ahead of the other, they nurse differences of opinion, ‘my God’, ‘your God’, ‘Gaṇapati is greater’, ‘Hanumān is greater’, and quarrel. On top of this, My Paramātma too, saying ‘I am One; may I become many’, shows man divinity in many different forms. The elders who know from experience recognise the divinity shining in all human beings.
On the spiritual path, faith is of the first importance. Between birth and death, man takes in experiences that drag him down, and believes what should not be believed. What deserves belief, he does not believe. He has lost Viveka and discernment, and he suffers.
Out of its trust in its mother, the baby in her lap calls the people she points out by the very names she gives: ‘That is my father, this is my grandfather, this is my elder sister.’ It trusts the word ‘This is your father’ with a pure, steady and selfless mind. If the mother did not tell, who else could say who the father is? In the same way, Mother Nature: ‘There is one Creator. He alone is the Lord of the world,’ she keeps saying, yet people do not trust her, and go on piling up argument and counter-argument: ‘Is He there or is He not?’ They trust Nature, whom they call Mother, but do not trust God, who is Father, and so they proclaim to the world, ‘Our mother is barren.’
Everything we do, we do on faith. We go to a barber, and though we know he has a sharp razor, we do not turn back! Trusting that he will do us no harm, we place our head in his hands. Each of us enjoys happiness only by trusting others.