In plain words
So we can show the Satya that without this divinity, individuality cannot exist in any country, at any time, in any circumstance. This Advaita is not subject in the least to the sway of place, time and circumstance.
So the distinction of humanness is just this: to journey from Dvaita to Viśiṣṭa Advaita, and from Viśiṣṭa Advaita to Advaita. So all who became ideal persons for the country made just this journey and came to see divinity. Muhammad and Jesus, all of them alike, first: I am the messenger of God; next, I am the Son of God; next, I and My Father are one. It is because they kept making this journey that they became fit to give these holy teachings to the people. On the journeys men make, though some stations come along the way, we need not take account of them. We must reach the goal where our journey arrives, the level called the end. Keeping this Satya in our citta, we must try through it to make it known to the students. Every man keeps wishing that he will win in the work he does, that he must gain victory. Then that victory may come soon, or it may be somewhat delayed. Be that as it may, the aim of winning that victory stays firm in everyone's heart.
To win this victory, each thing has its way, its method. The resolve to build a house has entered us. Does a house get made merely by resolving? First, a plan must be drawn. After the plan is drawn, then one day a firm foundation must be dug for it. Step by step, building the walls, laying the roof, doing the plastering: this is the way a house is built. Farming is just the same. In what soil what seeds are to be sown, what manure is to be put in, when the crop is to be raised: we must study this procedure to some extent. Without knowing these methods we cannot raise crops, we cannot get a house built. In the same way, gaining learning too has its procedures. In examinations, some pass and some fail. A wrong notion has spread among people that not everyone can pass. This is not right. What is the reason these students meet with failure? Or what is the reason they gain success? For this too there are procedures. It is only because they do not keep to them that some meet with failure. Some pass by reading blindly, after a fashion, stuffing it into their heads, and through this memory; but even those who pass are not keeping to the procedures. When teachers try to teach these procedures to the students, every student is bound to pass.
First: there must be a strong longing in the student. There must be firm faith, ‘I can pass, I can pass in the first class.’ ‘Success begets success’: there is such a proverb in English. If we have won one success, then by the strength of that success, by the courage of that success, we can win many successes. If it is a failure instead, that failure brings some weaknesses, discouragement sets in, he comes to think of himself as someone good for nothing, and he may meet with many more failures too. Here, there is nothing wrong in failing. What is wrong is setting the aim small. We must teach the children to set their aim, above all, high. We must fire him with zeal, telling him to work hard the second time and win a success that goes beyond that failure. This is the aim that must be there first. That is, a strong longing. A kind of yearning must be there.
Now the second. We must keep company, to some extent, with those better than us, those who have won real success. Only when that wish is there does the zeal, ‘I too must go ahead like them, I too must win success like them, I too must pass like them,’ grow strong in him to some extent. From time to time we must go on telling the children what people who won such successes went through. Not only this: in the rooms where the children live, or in their books, we must show them photos of those who have won such success. Today, unfortunately, children put up cinema pictures in the rooms where they study. Because of this, these children have neither zeal nor the longing to win success, and so they meet with failure. We must measure ourselves, to some extent, against those better than us.
The third is a great ideal. When there is a great ideal, even our friends try to look up to us. What is that great ideal? If, because the pass mark is 35, they set their aim on 35 marks alone, only 25 marks will come. The aim is far too small. Not that way. Hold a great ideal. If you aim to get 95 marks, you will not get less than 60 or 65 at the least.