In plain words
However much they punished him, ‘What you teach is very wrong. In education, first of all, Dharma must be the footing. This is the chief step among the puruṣārthas. We must gain artha through Dharma. Money is needed, certainly, but we must earn money through Dharma. Desires must be there, certainly, but we must fulfil our desires through Dharma. When we follow this way, Mokṣa comes of itself,’ Prahlāda said. Again, Mokṣa does not drop suddenly out of the sky. Nor does it spring up from the nether world or from the earth.
The Ending of Ajñāna Is Itself Mokṣa
The ending of Ajñāna is itself Mokṣa. Just as fire is seen when you blow away the ash on top, in the same way, when the clouds that cover it move away, the sun shines for us. We need make no separate effort to send the clouds away. The sun itself brought the clouds into being. When the clouds he himself brought into being cover him, does he work himself into anger? In a little while they move away of themselves. This is not what teachers should be teaching these students. Dharma is the first footing. Artha and kāma are the second. Mokṣa alone is the top level. To climb onto the roof, we put up a ladder. Without the bottom step and the top step, how can we climb onto the roof? These two are the ones in the middle. Students! We must teach this to the teachers. We ourselves must become the teachers: in this way Prahlāda taught the children. He was a child five years old. Today's scientists have done research for a thousand years and are now proclaiming the truth that atomic energy is everywhere. But Prahlāda, a student five years old, said even then, ‘Have no doubt that He is here and not there.’ Look where you will, God Himself is within the atom, within the particle. That very thing these scientists have been calling the atom. This very atom they have been proclaiming to be power. That power itself they called energy.