In plain words
In all My discourses too, I cannot give a discourse at all without these two, Prema and Dharma. For Me, Prema and Dharma are the in-breath and the out-breath. Whatever kind of subject comes, it does not matter. The chief thing in all of them is Prema and Dharma. That itself is the chief authority of the Veda. These two must keep dancing ceaselessly in man.
Students, you are reading many kinds of books. You are taking many subjects. No matter how many you read, how many you take, how many you hear, how far in all this are we understanding Satya and Prema? We must do acts of service. What kind of service? Service that destroys Ahaṅkāra. We must do service that crushes ostentation. Many devotees: Swami, give us good intelligence, give us the strength to enter the path of good conduct. Those who ask in this way are not devotees at all. Because they are saying, ‘Give me proper good intelligence.’ Good intelligence is there in you. This is not a banking business, where what one gives another takes. You have good intelligence. You are not putting it to use. They have served all the food on the leaf. Only if you eat it will your hunger go. If you leave what is on the leaf just as it is, how will the hunger go? Only after you have eaten it does strength come. You are not eating. Strength is not coming. So you take yourself to be weak. Practise what has been told. But today's practice is like this: if any lecture, any Harikathā, any Bhāgavata recital is going on, everyone goes. Till those talks go on, till those Harikathās go on, Vairāgya keeps springing up in this man. How long do the zeal and the Vairāgya that came last? The moment the lecture ends, they end. These things heard do not stay inside even till one reaches home. What gain is there when such people hear so many lectures? It is only hearing; there is no practising. Only when one practises does the fruit come. Only when one eats is the taste known. Hunger goes. Its fruit reaches us. We do not know the taste. Why? We are not eating. Why does our weakness not go? What is being eaten must be consumed. What has been eaten must be digested. This is just like the influence of Kali. This is becoming a kind of spiritual fashion. Not fashion: only when we develop compassion will this fashion run away. Today hearing itself has become a fashion. Where did you go, sir? I went to such-and-such a discourse. When one asks, ‘What happened there?’, they say, ‘Oh, so much happened!’