In plain words
But in My view even this brotherhood is a low level. They say, “Brotherhood of man, Fatherhood of God.” We must recognise the Satya that there is something higher than this. There are those who are brothers and yet have quarrelled and met with many misfortunes over property. There are brothers who cut four doors into one and the same house. Even this Brotherhood of man is not found in society; our Seva Dal members must hold to a level higher still than Brotherhood of man: the feeling that the Ātma is one. ‘The Truth is one; the wise speak of it in many ways’, ‘I am One; may I become many’, ‘Brahman is one alone, without a second’, ‘The Lord of all beings’, ‘All this is pervaded by the Lord’: this is the inner meaning of these sayings of the Upaniṣads. That the one Ātma alone appears as many in the many beings, divided into the forms of bodies. The Upaniṣads have always taught this Satya, the unity in this multiplicity. We must never swell with glee that we are wronging someone, doing him harm, causing him pain. It is not done to anyone else. You are doing it to yourself alone. Nor should you think, “I am helping someone, doing someone good.” That you are doing for yourself. Whatever you do, whatever you say, whatever you think, it is to yourself alone. And not to others: this is the inner meaning we must recognise. I once gave a small example at the All India state convenors Conference. Whatever we do, we do to ourselves. One day, in a certain house, they made 3 cups of coffee. The wife drank one cup and the husband one, and still one cup was left. “Shall we each drink half of this one cup of coffee? Or shall just one of us drink it?” While they were turning this over, some friend dropped in, and they gave him that cup of coffee. “I have done a great favour. I have done good, so that there is no quarrel between the two of us.” So thought the master of the house, as if he had done some mighty favour. Two months went by. In the third month, having some business with that friend, this householder went to the friend's house. That day the friend gave him a cup of coffee. The coffee he had handed over two months before came back to him that day. Had he kept that coffee in a glass in his own house these two months, it would have gone bad. Had this master of the house not given him that cup of coffee when he came to his house, the friend would not have given him a cup of coffee in return that day. In just the same way, every karma, whether we do it knowingly or unknowingly, comes back to us. Do evil or do good, it comes back at some time or other. So do good, and be ready to receive good. The root cause of karma is karma itself.
Of karma the creature is born, by karma alone it grows; by karma it perishes; karma alone is God to men; karma alone is the cause of joy and grief in this world.
So, among sacred karmas, if you do niṣkāma karmas in the spirit of doing them for the pleasure of the Lord, with purity of citta, and dwell in boundless Prema and spotless feeling, through these three you have the chance to reach divinity with the greatest ease. Seva Dal members and office-bearers alike must believe that this is the right path: to lay, through service of this kind and karmas of this kind, a royal road fit for winning God and reaching God.