Passage 5

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In plain words

Yajña means the spirit of sacrifice. This spirit of sacrifice has gone from us entirely. The spirit of enjoyment has grown great. Through this very spirit of enjoyment the pull of outer things grows. Because the outer pull grows, man forgets his own true nature. Because he forgets his own nature, he falls into many sorrows. The divinity in man must always remain pure. He cannot recognise his own strength. The black bee bores a hole with its beak even in good seasoned wood. More than that, it bores even into a man's body. That was the true mark of Karṇa's kṣātra dharma. When his guru lay on his thigh and this bee bored through his thigh, he bore it. The bee has this much strength. Yet when the same bee enters a lotus and the lotus closes, it cannot break through the delicate petals. Why can this strong bee not get out through the petals of so delicate a lotus? Drinking the sweet nectar in that flower, it has forgotten its true nature and its strength. In the same way man today ignores the divinity that is everywhere, in his eyes, in his body, in his home; he forgets that he himself is the embodiment of divinity, loses his faith, becomes absorbed only in physical sense-desires, enjoys them, gets drunk on them, utterly drunk, becomes one with them, and forgets his own power. This is the root cause. To forget his own power, he builds up the power that is in the world. So although the power called divinity is in man, passing outer powers make him forget it.