In plain words
‘Ekovasi sarvabhūtāntarātma,’ ‘Ekameva advitīyaṃ brahma,’ ‘Īśvaras sarvabhūtānāṃ,’ ‘Īśāvāsyamidaṃ sarvaṃ.’ Practising this Satya is far more essential than our merely reciting it. Many people read the Rāmāyaṇa. We think that in the Rāmāyaṇa obeying the father's word is supremely important. ‘Rāmo vigrahavān dharmaḥ’: Rāma is the very form of Dharma. But how many among us practise these words? How many obey the father's word? Then what is the use of reading the Rāmāyaṇa? If we waste our time, however long, on knowing and more knowing, when will we practise? There is no fruit for us in knowing. The fruit lies in practising. Merely cooking a feast of the five kinds of food and sweet rice does not satisfy our hunger. Only when we eat them is our hunger satisfied. In the same way, our knowing, our reading and our listening are merely like cooking of a kind. No, no; there must be practising and experiencing. Only then will your hunger called unrest be satisfied.
Take away these two, Ahaṅkāra and desire, and Śānti alone remains!
Śānti, Śānti, Śānti! Where is it? Today, wherever we go in the world, we do not find Śānti. Many foreigners keep coming. When you ask them what they want, they say, I want peace, I want peace. Peace is right there in the very sentence I want peace. In the sentence I want peace there are three words. I-ego, want-desire: take away these two, and peace stands right there. If we take away these two, we ourselves become the very form of Śānti. Where would we try to search for the Śānti that is our own true form? We try to seek God, whose form is Ānanda, somewhere or other, to search for Him in far-off places. There is no need at all to go to the forest to see the divinity that is within oneself! This very thing is said in the Puruṣa Sūkta: ‘Antarbahiśca tatsarvam vyāpya nārāyaṇasthitaḥ’.