In plain words
Only When We Change Our Vision Do We Reach the Goal
There is no need to search somewhere for God. Keeping God within you, you go searching somewhere outside. Just as you wear garlands at your throat and take delight in yourself, so you wear all such jewels as Ahaṅkāra and pride round your neck and take delight in them. Take off the ornament called Ahaṅkāra. Take off the ornament called pride. Take off the Ahaṅkāra called diversity. Less luggage, more comfort, make travel a pleasure. Little by little we must keep on reducing this kind of weight. But the load of man today grows heavier day by day. How will Śānti come to us? Where shall we find joy? We shall not find it. Step by step we must come to know, ‘Joy and Śānti are right within me.’ Just as you set your sense of identity in a stone, in that way you grow your sense of identity with the body. ‘Think, “This body is mine”; there is nothing wrong in that. But you must not dwell on the thought, “The body is I.”’ What is this? Cloth. We have put it at a distance. When I say ‘my towel’, the towel is other than me. When I say ‘my tumbler’, the tumbler is other than me. In the same way, when I say ‘my body’, the body is apart from me. I am not the body. Just because he sits in the car and drives it, he is not the car. In the same way, man today falls prey to certain wrong notions on the spiritual path. From ancient times, many paṇḍits too have led people down a wrong road in this matter and have gone on falling into unrest. We may perform pūjās, we may keep vratas. But all these are for a passing Śānti of the Manas. Never can these take us to the goal. Only when we change our vision do we reach the goal. Where must we turn that vision? We must turn it inward. Only then do we attain the goal that fits it.
Wherever There Is a Pure Heart, There All Is Belief in God!
Embodiments of Prema! Bhakti and prapatti are very noble paths. In these too, as long as a worldly feeling remains, we must go on doing some acts of service.