In plain words
To whom did we give an invitation? Is their intelligence less than yours? Is your cleverness better than theirs? No, no. When they come having given up everything, counting neither money nor comfort nor pleasure, how much Bhakti and surrender they must have! So you must not grow weak, like Tyāgarāja, because your wishes have not been fulfilled. You must not lay faults on the divine. If there were no power, would people come here from so many countries? Would people of different religions come together as one like this? If you go on enquiring in this way, your smallness will come out into the open. It is your own smallness that gets bound up in petty feelings like these. So you must keep developing a higher feeling, a nobler feeling, a broader feeling.
All our students who pass out of the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning must be examples wherever they go. Students must be students, not seekers of sense objects. Our students are quite different from the students of the world outside. We must respect everyone. We must not give room to petty-mindedness and fall into any kind of bad name.
Students must strive to uphold the honour of the institution
Students! It does not matter if you do not get marks, but you must not get remarks. You must win the name, ‘Such and such a student has achieved so good a name.’ Just as you passed with great distinction in the games and received the best prizes, try in the same way to receive from Swami too the title ‘a good boy’. In the world many titles are given. They give ‘Padmaśrī’, ‘Padmavibhūṣaṇ’ and who knows what else. Those are not our titles. ‘Śruṇvantu viśve amṛtasya putraḥ’: ‘You are a son of immortality, My son!’ That is what must be said of you. You must not behave merely as ordinary children. You must behave as children who are an example. Some faults will arise; mistakes will happen.