In plain words
Young men! You are human beings. Children of God. Reflections of God. ‘All of you are part of Me, My very form,’ God says. Being such embodiments of God, why must you be afraid? Why must you be ashamed to say the Name of God? Why must you hang back from teaching others the story of God? Away with this. Take part in the service of God with courage. Not only become pure yourselves, but make your fellow men pure. If someone asks where they are going, they are ashamed to say they are going to Tirupati or to Puttaparthi. ‘We are going to Bangalore, sir,’ they say. How weak they are! Why must you lie over so small a thing? I am going to Puttaparthi. I am going to have the darśan of Swami: if you say so, what shame is it to you? We must take part in the service of God with courage. You must gain such courage and enter society. You must enter into service with courage and daring. We need not even worry about what service it is, or what kind.
Village service is Sai service
Today in the villages people fall prey to many diseases through uncleanliness, through not having proper food, through lack of proper water. Wherever you look, pollution. When you enter such villages, you must first of all do service. You need not go to the same village every week. In doing service you spend money. Those of you who hold jobs will lose them if you take leave every time. So how must you do it? When you go to a village, you gather the young of that village and teach them well: ‘Sirs! If we do not clean our village ourselves, who else will?’ Holding a meeting every week, the young of that village themselves must strive to do service in that place. How hard it is to go all the way from Hyderabad to Nellore. You must take the young people of Nellore itself and give training to those Nellore youths. If you go to another village, you must give fitting teaching to that village's young and have them do service. Then your money is not spent and your time is not wasted. In this way you must take part in service in every village. You must hold some medical camps. For health itself is the greatest fortune. Without health we can do no work. We must make the main arrangements to do with health. You must take one or two doctors along and have a medical checkup done. When today's young, having given up every attachment, do service in the villages in this way, the villagers too will feel ashamed and take part themselves. We must always be servants, servants, servants. Leadership lies in being a servant itself. The leaders in today's world have never been people who served; without serving, they hope to become leaders. That is why the world is coming to this pass. Honour lies in being a servant itself.
Do you know what kind of person Hanumān was? Hanumān was calm, virtuous and strong. He reached the Aśoka grove in search of Sītā. He did many sacred deeds. But the rākṣasas of Laṅkā had never seen a monkey's face. Thinking a new kind of animal had come, they all set out to see it. Among them Rāvaṇa's son Indrajit asked, ‘Who are you?’ Who does not know Hanumān's strength and powers? Yet he said, ‘Dāso’haṃ kosalendrasya: sir! I am the servant of Śrī Rāmacandra,’ he said. In being a servant he gained great honour. If we think, ‘I am the servant of Śrī Rāmacandra’, the honour is ours, and no one else's. One person may be the servant of another. One may be a servant of evil deeds and evil thoughts. One may be a servant of sense pleasures and the joys of the senses. What is wrong in being a servant of God? We must go on enquiring in this way. What wrong am I doing; why must I be afraid? What is wrong in doing service to society?
Every action for the pleasure of God
In this way you must develop courage and daring within yourself. First of all, courage and daring must come. When you take part in service in this way, God will be right beside you. There is no need to do other sādhanas. If you get the time, do dhyāna and japa. In this modern age, doing dhyāna and japa is hard. He sits for dhyāna as if he were sitting for a nice photograph. The mind roams all over the market. You have no need of this dhyāna. Shut your mouth, open your heart. That itself is true dhyāna. Today people shut their heart and open their mouth. This is no dhyāna at all. They do japa, the japa beads turn in the hand, and the mind travels to the washerman's house and the barber's house. This is not japa.