In plain words
This again is the second mistake. To leave our true form, to cast off that form and enter merely into the world: that is the first mistake. The mistake we make to cover up our mistake and turn it into something good: that is the second mistake. To recognise a mistake, not to make it again, and to step into what is right: that is the mark of a noble person. Here we must recognise a kind of close bond of kinship. What has life come for? Life has not come to lust. We must recognise the truth that it has come to love. This very Prema is God's chief power. This firm, steady, sacred, selfless Prema is present in everyone.
But because man falls prey to the difference between 'mine' and 'another's', it takes shape merely as something divided. We must inquire a little into 'mine' and 'another's' as well. I. I. I must be happy. Here we must inquire well. This 'I' … . Just as much as I long for my happiness, the other person too, saying 'I, I' … , that person too longs for his own happiness in the same way. We must recognise the truth that there is nothing wrong in this. However important your happiness is to you, however much it counts, the other person's happiness counts just as much and is just as important. But people do not try to recognise this equality. As much as I love myself, the other person loves himself just as much. In whatever way a man hopes that others will respect him, there is nothing wrong in the other person also hoping that others will respect him, is there? Such a broad outlook is not coming either to the students of today or to the educated. What is education? Sā vidyā yā vimuktaye. Sā vidyā: sā means sacred. Sā means the Brahman principle, all-pervasiveness, all-knowingness. This principle of the letter 'sa', which is such all-knowingness, all-powerfulness and all-pervasiveness, is present in everyone. To develop these broad feelings is the chief duty of the educated. Others must respect me, at least. But I, for my part, need not respect others? So you first respect others, and after that you become worthy of others' respect. We are forgetting this kind of equality. We are building up a selfishness that knows no limit. Through it we are straying from the ways of humanness. Because we stray from the ways, our minds go astray. Because the mind goes astray, we enter into attachment and aversion. This attachment and aversion itself takes shape as boundless impurity. This very impurity covers our true form.
Students! What you must recognise is this: we think of everything as 'mine, mine'. But if you ask what is yours, you yourself are yours. Nothing is yours. This cloth is mine, this chair is mine. But how far are this chair and this cloth mine? If I think, 'This chair is mine', that chair … if I think so, this chair and I are separate, are we not?