Passage 8

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In plain words

By this going round the sun the seasons are formed. Through these seasons the rains fall. The crops ripen. There is no lack of anything for cooking. So how helpful this earth is to our eating and our living. This itself is God before our eyes. You see God, and still you think you do not see Him. A great mistake. Prakṛti itself is the form of the Paramātma.

What should we recognise from this Prakṛti? Being active. We must carry out our duty. It is only because Prakṛti keeps to its own duty that it can be so sacred and do the world such good. That is why the secret of creation is the doing of duty itself. Whatever work you enter upon, do that work with śraddhā and Bhakti. Instead, wanting to be happy somehow, for the sake of this happiness, man takes many wrong roads. In this modern age, under the influence of English education, the ways of the students and the influence of the educated follow a perverse path. You all know this: many officers go to the office. The rich go to their offices. They do their work. They come home as though they had been through some great toil. "We have no happiness, we have no Śānti," they lament. They come home and, for the sake of happy, take off their dress, put on another dress, and go off to the clubs. What do they go for? For happy, for joy, they go. They want Rest. Is there really happy there? Is there really Śānti there? Is there really happiness there? Going to those clubs, playing cards, taking bottles, sitting at ease and forgetting the world. And more and more, 'madyamadhupānīyaṃ samarpayāmi' and who knows what else they do. All these they regard as good deeds done merely for the sake of happiness and Śānti. This is a very wicked way. In their longing for this happiness, happiness, they are buying sorrow. Not only do they ruin themselves; they ruin society too. At first a way like this may look very pleasant. Going on and on, step by step, where does it land? First the man drinks the wine, second the wine drinks the wine, third wine drinks the man.