In plain words
Unable to recognise the sanctity in service and the divinity in service, man is holding back from taking part in it. So it is a great mistake to think of the spirit of service as doing service just to uplift some country or other. You need not do service to uplift the country. You must regard all this service as done only to uplift yourself. Unable himself to recognise the fruit of serving others and the divinity of serving others, man takes part in service merely from the feeling of Ahaṅkāra that we are serving others, and from a selfish outlook.
The man without good qualities, sacrifice and steadfastness in Satya is a man without life.
A life that does no service must be regarded as a life in a dark house.
Our life has come into being from society itself. Your fame and standing, your comforts and pleasures, your riches and enjoyments: we are able to receive them only from this society. To this society that solves every problem, to this society that gives every comfort, to this society that makes humanness blossom, if we do not serve, whom else are we to serve? If we do not serve Nature, which in so many ways, through research and through study, has taught us the supreme principle, whom are we to serve? When our handkerchief falls to the ground and someone picks it up and hands it back, we offer them our gratitude, saying "Thanks". But should we not say even that much Thanks to Nature and society, which have gathered and given so many advantages, so many proper comforts, to this holy, divine humanness? A life of ours without such gratitude must be thought lower than that of wild beasts. Service is the chief duty of man. It is the chief aim of our life. Forgetting this aim and trusting in aimlessness, we are wasting our life.
What service needs is not wealth, grain and such material things; that is not the need. Without a heart of Prema, however many acts of service one does, they are simply wasted. What we must fill today: we must fill our hearts with the principle of Prema. The consciousness of Nature is not something wasted. When it is bent on Ahaṅkāra, it becomes deformed. When it is bent on the Ātma, it becomes good. That humanness, the sacred feeling which set man apart from all creatures and showed him as a divine man, we are forgetting today. And so today we show only the outward form of man; humanness is not to be seen in that person at all.