In plain words
How long should one meditate?
That is why many people went to Ramaṇa Maharṣi: ‘Swāmī! How long should we meditate? Should we do it for an hour, for half an hour, or are five minutes enough?’ they asked. ‘My son! Do it until you no longer know that you are meditating,’ he said. If you say "I am meditating", how can that be meditation? You must lose the knowing that you are meditating. That is meditation. When asked how long they should eat, people say, "I eat in five minutes." Sāī Bābā finishes his meal in a second and comes back. "I eat for half an hour." That is not the right answer. How long do you eat? You eat until your stomach is full: that is the right answer. Eating for a longer time does not mean eating more. We should eat until the stomach is full. We must pray until the heart ripens. What does it mean for the heart to ripen? Every love must become our own. We must change and become full of Prema.
Whatever work you do, do it in the spirit of God
If we grow such a principle of Prema, these yugas, these hours, these bonds of karma cannot shake us in the least. We need fear nothing. We need not tremble at anything. We must gain the strength fit to face everything. Where does that strength come from? It comes from the faith that God is in me. Grow that faith. Everything will bring us only victory. Do not be shaken because someone has said something about this year. Who wrote the almanac? An astrologer. But when we keep in mind God, who is Time itself, what can this astrologer do? If we think of God, all these melt away. Whatever work we do, we must believe it to be God's work and do it in the spirit of God. This Ugādi, the young must put more faith in the thought of God. In Bhārata the young are forgetting their feeling for the nation. What does "my country" mean? What does "my religion" mean? What does "my life" mean? What does education mean? These are the things they are forgetting.
Practice matters more than learning
What does education mean? An acquaintance with books. Reading books. That is not acquaintance with books. Whoever has the most books in his bedroom has the most diseases: that is what it means. Always reading books is a disease. That is not what we must learn. Rather than learning a hundred things, we must do one and show it. The young of today must put it into practice. Mother and motherland are greater even than heaven. We must hold our motherland and the mother who bore us higher than heaven. But today there is no love for our mother, and no love for our motherland. They love somebody or other. What is this love? What you should love is your mother, and God. That is why it has been said, "Treat your mother as God, your father as God, your teacher as God." Make your mother happy first. You make a great fuss of … that came along in between. This is a weakness. This is not what we should do. We must turn our love into a love that does not change. We must turn it into divine Prema. In no circumstances should this be strained in the least. We must gain a mind that does not waver and a vision that does not stray. If that one Prema for God is there, all loves merge into it. Keep thinking of God. We have no friend greater than Him. God is the one who is selfless. Look on Him as your true friend. If you treat Him with any other feeling, He Himself becomes your enemy. Always look on God as your friend. Love Him as a friend. Merge your Prema in His Prema. That is enough.