In plain words
“Prema alone is equal to Prema. The fruit of Prema is Prema alone. Only Prema can know the sweetness of Prema. Nothing else can know it.’ All the relationships people live in the world today in the name of Prema are full of anurāga; they have nothing to do with pure Prema. Whatever thing man wants in the world today, he does not love it for the thing's sake. He loves the thing for his own sake. Whoever loves a person does not love that person for the person's sake. He loves that person only for his own sake. In this way, even between mother and child, the mother loves the child for her own sake and not for the child's. In the same way, a wife and her husband, a husband and his wife, love each other each for his or her own ends, and not one for the other's sake. This is the working of anurāga.
Self-interest and one's own advantage
Today, under the sway of Kali, people experience their Prema for God in just this way. They do not love God for God's sake. They love God for their own sake. If one truly loved for God's sake, there would be no room at all in that Prema for attachment, hatred or sorrow. Man today keeps self-interest and his own advantage as his aim, and so he soils his Prema. So man lives his life as a “puppet” of self-interest. He will not try to take even one step forward without self-interest and his own advantage. Man makes no effort to recognise the truth that the divine principle of the Ātma is in everything.
What the world needs today is not new methods. It is not a new education, a new religion or a new tradition. Men and women of good character, boys and girls of virtue, are what the world needs most today. This can grow only on the spiritual path; it is not possible by any other path; it is impossible. Students must inquire: what is the root cause of the changes that have come today in the moral, dhārmic and spiritual paths? Today self-interest and narrow feelings have grown in man far more than before. If we ask what causes this, it appears that the root cause is an animal nature made of self-interest and one's own advantage. In man the divine, the human and the animal are all three joined together. Man, who meant to go from the human to the divine, has slid down from the human to the animal, and that is why so many changes have come. The cause of it is forgetting the divine within the human and feeding the animal. As far as they can, students must try to curb self-interest and their own advantage in themselves.
Not a ‘long life’ but a ‘divine life’
Man is born in society, grows up in society and lives in society. He must keep the progress and the welfare of society in view. We must make the peace of our family grow in our own home. How can a man who has no peace in his family bring peace to society?