In plain words
If the foot is hurt, the eye weeps. In this way every limb of the body follows each of the others, wishes each one well and carries out its own duties. We must enquire a little into the danger that would come if, instead, each limb thought that only the work assigned to it mattered and went on achieving its own tasks alone.
Our heart is supplying blood to all the limbs. While it is doing so, if the other limbs, out of some envy or some other kind of anger, were to rebel and try to begin a strike, the rest of the body would be liable to waste away. How does this begin a strike? When the envious feeling enters the other limbs, “The mouth alone is eating the food that all the limbs gathered, and does not give it to us,” and when the other limbs bring their own work to a standstill, the body itself wastes away. In just the same way people, the limbs of the country, not carrying out their own duties, hating one another, envying one another, have led the way to revolt, and that has caused the country's condition too to waste away. None should try to build up his own self-interest. Selfishness itself is the great demon. Man must not live in the state of mind that says, “Only I and mine must be well; whatever becomes of others does not matter.” Today we must follow the way that develops fellowship. Precisely because this fellowship has wasted away today, fear and panic rise in every man: “What evil state will the future of Bhārata come to?”
In such a state, the Bal Vikas pupils of today, boys and girls, must recognise this Satya and, to make the future secure enough, must first of all strengthen their faith. To strengthen self-confidence we have to practise many kinds of sādhana. We have to make many enquiries too. Only when we make such enquiries and strengthen self-confidence do we become fit for the sacrifice of self (‘self-sacrifice’) and for the vision of the Ātma. Boys and girls! Today we urgently need the kinds of learning that refine the nature of the mind. All of today's branches of learning are arts of illusion. All of today's machines are machines for filling the belly. Today's knowledge is worldly knowledge. So some worldly learning is needed, to sustain daily life. These came into being merely for earning a living. Our main aim is to recognise, along with the means of living, the supreme goal of life as well. When we make the means of living our support, when shall we ever recognise the supreme principle called the supreme goal of life!
Boys and girls! The means of living is merely like a negative. The supreme goal of life is like the positive. The means of living is merely like a bulb. The supreme goal of life is like the current. If we look to the bulb of the means of living alone as what matters, we cannot get light, for there is no current. So for the bulb of the means of living we must also earn some of the current of the supreme goal of life. Only by the union of these two does our life take shape as the lamp of life. The day we light the lamp of life in our life, that very day humanness fulfils its meaning. We must grow deep faith in God. If faith in God is lacking, we turn into devils. Then what is it that gives humanness its meaning? What is the inner meaning of the saying ‘Among living beings, a human birth is hard to win’? The man who brings into manifestation the power that is beyond sight and unmanifest: he alone makes good the name of humanness. So we must grow self-confidence. Without viśvāsa, faith, not even for a moment would our śvāsa, our breath, hold. A man who means to go to the market and buy some goods could not set out for the market without the faith, “I shall go to the market and be able to come back home.” A man setting out to build a house would not even begin the foundations without the trust, “I shall dig the foundations and be able to finish this house.” Without the faith, “I shall go to school and come back home,” he would not go to school at all. When we are given homework, without the faith, “Tomorrow I shall do this properly and be able to hand it in to the teacher,” he would not even set about the homework. In such small things that happen in daily life, man has deep faith. The moment a son is born, we put ten thousand rupees on deposit in the bank in advance, to educate him and send him to America. What guarantee is there that the son will live for ten years? In things merely worldly, impermanent, transient and Asatya we are strengthening deep faith. The Divine principle, which is eternal Satya, we are forgetting today. So, if man is to gain Ānanda, if happiness is to come to him, how can he win Ānanda without faith of this kind? First, ‘self-confidence’, faith in the self. Second, ‘self-satisfaction’. With such self-confidence, this Ānanda comes to us.