Passage 7

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In plain words

What more than this can I give? All that I have is nothing but wealth You gave. What else is there with me? If I have anything at all, it is only what You gave. All is Yours alone. There is nothing anywhere that is mine. All is Yours alone. This is the tax that must be given to God. Until we give it, we have no choice but to take any number of births. We have no choice but to put on any number of forms. Believer, unbeliever or believing unbeliever, this alone is what you must give.

Without being ready to offer such a sacred tax, we get ourselves called "devotees, devotees." Bhakti is only a name. It has turned into a degree. Today, when people want a job through their education, they write their name, and after it they write "MBA" or "MFA." They give jobs only on seeing the degree. He thought he would go for a job. Rāmayya wrote "TDFS." "Hey, what is this? Where did this degree come from?" they wondered. TD ten daughters F.S. five sons. "This is my degree," he said, so they say. Is begetting children a degree? Is this the degree of man today? That is not our degree. Listen, all you children of immortality: that itself is our degree. I am the servant of God, a part of God. We must experience that divine principle. "You are indeed a part of Me. Not a part of Prakṛti. Not a part of the five elements. You are truly a part of Me Myself," said God. Instead of taking such degrees, we scramble after trivial things, and in the very end what becomes of us?

They have set the span of life at a hundred years, but do not trust that word in your quiet heart; in childhood, or in youth, or when grown old, or in decrepitude, in the village, in the forest or in the midst of the waters, when it will be left, there is no knowing; death, that is certain.

Sooner or later, that is certain. So I am offering it to You well beforehand. This is not real. The body is a bubble of water. Mind is like a mad monkey. Don't follow the mind don't follow the body. Follow the conscience. That very thing is the heart. Offer that heart. To offer that heart we must become the Name of God, not offer all these: some ripe fruit or other, a fruit, a leaf.