In plain words
So we must not go to excess in anything. Nor must we restrict it entirely. What turns into excess brings on a loss of reason. What is wholly restricted wears the body down. We must keep to the middle level. So, whatever we see and whatever we do, to regard it as of the divine nature of God and to regard every object as divinity is the right and attainable path of Bhakti.
But at the very first, regard certain images, certain forms, as God. But step by step you must recognise that divinity is not mere pictures. This is just it: you may worship the picture as God, but not God as picture. We must make this principle our own. From ordinary Bhakti, from special Bhakti, we must strive to reach the higher level. Worldly Bhakti is the very first step. That itself is like the flower. Step by step it turns into the green fruit. Then holy parā-bhakti itself is like the true ripe fruit. That is to say, they called the offering up of the qualities parā-bhakti. Without the flower there is no green fruit. Without the green fruit there can be no ripe fruit. Only when we recognise this Satya and make the effort to rise step by step to the higher level will our devotion and surrender reach the higher level, and we will taste Ānanda in the principle of the Ātma, which is divinity.
Embodiments of Prema!
Though twelve years have passed since our Dharmakṣetra began, we have not climbed step by step to the higher level but stayed on the level we were at, and with no fitting encouragement at all for our sādhanas to grow step by step, you are falling somewhat into discouragement. So, sing bhajans. Perform pūjās. But when we step into society, we must regard the living forms we meet in society as the forms of God and dedicate our lives to the service of that society. We must develop good qualities. Only then will this whole world, with no room for these upheavals, take shape as a peaceful, holy Bhārata. We must give no room to the narrow feeling that the Paramātma, whose form is the universe, is framed only inside a photo that is on your side alone, and that God stays only there. So to see God, who is vast and immense, as merely small is a narrow way of seeing. You must keep broadening your heart and, grown broad, merge it into divinity. It must begin from the narrow feeling. If you look at a balloon, it looks quite ordinary. But if you keep blowing, blowing, blowing into it, little by little, at one point it bursts. So, once our narrow feelings have come to a certain level, ‘I and mine’, if we bring them to the great higher level, ‘All are mine; the whole universe is mine’, then all at once they burst, and within divinity, whose form is the universe, this feeling too attains oneness.
We must recognise the Satya that in our life we are journeying from the place called ‘I’ to the place called ‘We’. But as long as you stay at the place of ‘I, I’, your journey does not go on. Īśvara's creation is like a bridge between the jīva and God. This Prakṛti is one mountain. Divinity is another mountain. What joins the two is the very nature of our Prakṛti. So if we keep away from this bridge, we can never reach the goal at all. It is My hope, and My blessing, that we leap into Prakṛti, into society, nurture good qualities, and through them shape this world into an atmosphere of peace.