In plain words
The paṇḍit was doing his sandhyā, taking up water from a tumbler with a spoon time after time and saying, “Prāṇāya svāhā, apānāya svāhā...” Seeing what his grandfather was doing, the grandson was astonished. “Grandfather! If you are so thirsty, you could lift the tumbler and drink up all the water at one go!” he said. The grandfather smiled: “My boy! Why do you keep dipping that pen into the ink bottle again and again? You could pour all the ink in that bottle onto the paper at one go!” he said. “If I pour it like that, no letters will come, Grandfather!” said the grandson. “Just so, unless I too say God's name each time and take the water with the spoon, it will not reach God, my boy!” the grandfather replied. When we write a letter to someone and the address is not right, it goes to the dead-letters office. In the same way, unless we pronounce the “address” correctly, one after another, “Prāṇāya svāhā, apānāya svāhā...”, it does not reach the five prāṇas. In matters that concern God, the right result comes only when we follow certain procedures in the proper way.
A mother's blessing needs God's grace beside it
If your mother raises any objection to your entering the spiritual path, answer her so that she understands it well. That is your duty. “I have grown into such a big man. So why should I revere my mother any longer?” You must not think that way. However big you have grown, you are still your mother's son, are you not? Any mother hopes that her son will win a great name, and above all that he will become worthy of God's grace. When her son bows at her feet, she blesses him: “My son! May you flourish for a full hundred years, with long life, health and wealth, with Śānti and happiness!” But for this blessing to bear fruit, God's grace is needed too. When the mother blesses, God too must say, “Tathāstu.” Otherwise even the mother's blessing does not hold good. Light comes only when there are both the current and the bulb, does it not? In the same way, there must be the mother's blessing, and there must be God's grace. Those who have both of these can rise to a high state. If you have at least God's grace alone, that is enough: you can achieve anything at all. So, whomever else you trust or do not trust, you must trust God. No one in this world can give you happiness and Śānti. People quote a saying in Telugu: “The mother herself had nothing and was licking up flattened rice, and the son-in-law turned up for the festival of lamps!” When the mother herself has nothing to eat, what can she set before the son-in-law? So too, no one in this world has happiness and Śānti. What they do not have themselves, how can they give to you? Only with God, who is Śānti itself in form, will you find Śānti. But with some people, whenever you look, it is nothing but worldly affairs and the worries of family life! How then are they to come by God's grace? Wherever such people go, there is no escape from worries. However great a mother may be, if God's grace itself is not on her son, she too can do nothing.