In plain words
In Bhārata, practice is what counts; neither show nor propaganda counts. Through actions we can change the world very easily. Through showy words alone a passing satisfaction may come. Little by little this becomes the path to downfall. In every small work we do, we must not waste our life on passing satisfactions. Look: today all passing services are Dīpāvali-day flowerpot fireworks. Up they go with a whoosh, down they come with a fizzle. With services of this kind we shall never achieve the result. Today we are putting down numbers. It is all quantity. "We are doing service in twenty thousand, thirty thousand, five thousand, six thousand villages." We must not look at this quantity. All these statistics must be put away in a corner. We must gird our loins for action that takes the form of practice. We must forget the very number, "so many villages, that many villages". As far as we are able, as much strength as we have, to that many villages we must go on doing it. Services have been going on all this time. That is a thing to be happy about. But it does not bring that much satisfaction. We are only enjoying a correspondence course. "We have done so many villages": correspondence from here. "You must do so many villages": correspondence from there. This correspondence must stop. We must recognise our own country. When we say we are doing service, it is not only our eyes. There are those in the world who watch with thousands of eyes. If we go to the village we spoke of and look, and ask what happened there, nothing at all. Is this what we do? However little we do, we must do it well, neatly, in a way that others respect and in a way that gives us satisfaction. First of all, within the Sai organisations, this show of words must stop. He who talks does not work. He who works does not talk. Whoever is talking is one who does not work. Saying, "I have a talk today," learning it by heart, taking a bit from there and a bit from here: is this what we should be doing? Is this the service we should be doing? Even a tape record does this work. We are not a tape record. A type record. We must give the ideal. The person who has taken part in service of this kind is the true servant.
One who does service for the fruit becomes a labourer, not the master. We must enter on work expecting no fruit at all. So we must take part in service without expecting the fruit, with a selfless feeling, in the spirit of freedom from Ahaṅkāra.