In plain words
Today we send up machines for television and for hearing at a distance, spend crores, and enjoy them. In that age it cost not a single naya paisa. It was only by turning the mind into sacred Divinity that all these powers came to them.
Students! We must enquire well into how, and how far, the human being has grown from his first level. No one becomes a scholar the moment he is born. Nor is he learned. Little by little, through our śraddhā and Bhakti alone, we reach so high a level. A BA, an MA. For a degree of two letters like these we labour so hard. How hard do we labour for Divinity, for God? What do we pour out for that sacred grace? Nothing. We must make the effort it deserves. By practice, tasks are accomplished in this world. We must not give a thing up, saying, we do not know, we do not know. We must try to attain the very thing we do not know. That was the sādhana the great ṛṣis of that age did. Saying, we must attain what we do not know, we must attain it, they bore and endured hardships, losses and sorrows of every kind, rain and sun in every way, withstood it all, pressed on, and went on attaining. Today, whatever effort we make, first of all we want to stay comfortable while the effort goes on. Not the least hardship must stand in our way. One who lives in comfort cannot achieve a single thing. One who has the earnestness to achieve has no room to seek comfort. We must give up everything and become an offering to God. Only then do all the kinds of knowledge beyond us come to us. However many sciences they mastered, however many powers they gained, not the least ego was ever to be seen anywhere in the great ṛṣis of that age. In today's scientists, researchers and men of science, if they achieve the least little thing, there is no holding them. With this ego even the head keeps tossing. Truly, an educated person has no room for ego. So ego must never be allowed to swell in students. Humility is the chief mark of learning, they said. What has science achieved today? We have not yet achieved anything at all. Going by the measure of our own intellects, we imagine we have achieved great things. Of the energy in the sun, the scientists of the whole world together enjoy only two parts in three thousand; 2998 still remain just as they were.