In plain words
As long as man does not know himself, sorrow cannot be escaped.
What is our bondage? What bondage pulls us down into this Māyā? House and home are not our bondage. Wife and children are not bondage. Property and possessions are not bondage. If you try to give all these up, you surely can give them up. But there is one thing that cannot be given up. That is rāga and dveṣa. As long as we are covered with rāga and dveṣa, man cannot recognise himself. As long as man does not know his own true nature, bondage cannot be escaped. As long as there is bondage, sufferings cannot be escaped. These sufferings are sorrow. So we must send this sorrow away. We must welcome Ānanda. So what we must see to today is this: we must not bring our life to its close with worldly learning alone. However much one studies, all this study that cannot recognise this principle of the Ātma at all is only wasted study.
Of all the learning one studies, what is the fruit? it is not in one's power to escape the writing on one's own forehead; if evil thoughts lodge in one's head, one turns to stone and wisdom withers.
We must escape the writing on our forehead. We must bring in good fortune. This is the chief duty we must do. Life is very precious. It is worth living. We must not make this precious, sacred birth meaningless. Along with worldly learning we must add spiritual learning too. Only then will the Ānanda of the Ātma come to us. If we keep only worldly learning, worldly earning and worldly wealth as our aim, none of these will come with us at all. Things that do not come with us are not ours. If they were our things, why would they not come with us? At birth one does not bring even this much cloth. At death one does not even leave an address behind. How then do these people become ours? How do these things become ours? We are striving for what is not ours. We are forgetting what is truly ours.
So our principle is the principle of the Ātma. Knowledge of the śāstras alone is not what matters most. Today book knowledge, tomorrow knowledge. The day after, allergy. Merely putting book and head together is not the chief aim. We must put into practice the sacred feelings that are in the head. That is why: Education is not only knowledge but it must be put in action. We must make the effort to bring it down into practice. What is our knowledge? Today everyone has great knowledge. We swell with pride, thinking we have great intelligence.