Passage 5

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In plain words

It breaks your own wealth; it burns away the honour you have; it sets you apart from your own people; for people, everything is ruined by anger.

For one who has anger no work bears fruit; misfortunes befall; doing sinful deeds, to be told 'Chī, be off!' is what comes of it, be sure of that!

When we do sādhanas with a Manas full of such impurities, what will these sādhanas be like? They will be like washing mud with mud. So, because of these faults the Manas has, however many sādhanas we do, it does not become pure in the least.

First of all we must root out this impurity that has entered the Manas. In what way is it rooted out? Only in service to society, only in the oneness of the Ātma, is this impurity rooted out. So we must gain the feeling of the one Ātma. This feeling of the one Ātma comes to us only in service. This Manas has another name too. Antaḥkaraṇa. Antaḥkaraṇa means the inner sense. The inner instrument, that is. In the antaḥkaraṇa it tries to examine what is permanent and what is impermanent. Because it has this nature of examining the permanent and the impermanent, it came to be called Buddhi. It is very subtle. The senses are subtler than the body, Manas than the senses, Buddhi than Manas: each is a form subtler than the one before. Subtler than this Buddhi is the Ātma. Because this Buddhi is close to the Ātma, it is powerful. Only the one who has Buddhi, holding fast to śraddhā, can attain a high place. But Buddhi is like a mirror. However clean the mirror may be, you must coat its back with mercury. Otherwise, however clean the mirror may be, if you do not coat it with mercury, your reflection will not appear. In the same way Buddhi is very sacred, precious and strong. Even so, only when you coat its other side with the essence called Prema can you see your own svarūpa in it very clearly. Only through Prema can you behold your own svarūpa; to recognise your own true svarūpa is right humanness itself.