In plain words
“The one who teaches, ‘Reach Hari, my son,’ is a father; the one who says, ‘Earn wealth, my son,’ is no father.” So within a single śloka he as good as dropped a great bomb on the teachers, on fathers, on learning, on everything. “You madman! God, God! Where is this Hari, boy?” he blazed. Hiraṇyakaśipu did. When the time of ruin comes, the understanding turns perverse: that was now about to come. “Where is God?” Smiling a gentle smile. “Have no doubt that He is here and not there,” he said. “Wherever you look, there is only the One. You and I are mere illusions. There is only the One here. There, wherever you look, the One alone is. You have become blind, unable to recognise this principle.” Without even the respect owed to a father, he went on teaching Vedānta plainly. He seized his son by the neck and shoved him away.
In this way Nārada went on telling it to Dharmarāja. Dharmaja was greatly pained. “Instead of rejoicing to see this son, so holy, virtuous, of fine character, a great person with every good quality, this wicked man set about tormenting such a son: is that right! This is most unjust,” he said. Then Nārada said: “Sorrow with pleasures, good and bad: these two come joined to their opposites. They are simply reflections of one another. The one cannot be without the other. God has no anger, nor hatred of any other kind. He has no favour and no wrath. God is simply like a full-length mirror. Your own actions come back to you as that reaction. The reflections that come from that mirror are all simply you. So the faults in what you call your reflection are all in you alone.” In this way he went on teaching. Not only this: Nārada went on telling, in a fine and humble way, of Prahlāda's learning and his surrender. What was the reason such great understanding came to him? It was not simply because of his parents. When he was in Līlāvatī's womb, Nārada went on teaching all kinds of Vedānta. All the ideas of that Vedānta, when she was full with child, all those ideas went in. That is why in olden times, in the ancient tradition, people always told good stories to women who were with child. The life of Mārkaṇḍeya, the life of Prahlāda, the life of Śrī Rāma: such sacred stories they would tell. What is the reason all this has gone and the whole saṃskāra of today has come in? So that no bad feelings came to them and they lived always in joy and gladness, every week people held some festival or other for them. So that no ill feelings had any room in them, they kept telling them auspicious stories all the time.