In plain words
To be born in the land of Bhārata, to bear the name of Bhāratīyas, and still to fail to recognise the Bhāratīya principle: this is a great misfortune. “Bhā” means effulgence; ‘rata’ means longing for it. So the chief aim of the Bhāratīyas is this very longing for God, the Effulgent One. But today it is the Bhāratīyas themselves who are forgetting God, the Effulgent One. What is more: “We are ordinary people, we lead ordinary lives, we are forever sunk in any number of tasks. So we have no time to remember God,” they say. This is talk without meaning. Do they not watch TV? Do they not go to the cinema? Do they not gossip about others? To plunge into so many worthless pursuits, and then to say there is no time only for the worthwhile thought of God: what Ajñāna that is!
Put charcoal into fire and fan it with a hand-fan, and the charcoal too turns into fire. God, Prajñāna-svarūpa and the Effulgent One, is the fire; man, wrapped in the darkness of Ajñāna, is the charcoal. Bring this charcoal close to that fire, fan it with the fan called sādhana, and this charcoal too turns into fire. But man does not recognise this divine secret; he does not remember God, and he lays waste his time in Ahaṅkāra and show.
If we remember the Name of God with all our heart, no troubles whatever befall us. Even if they do befall us, it is that Name itself that grants us the strength and the power to bear them, push past them and go forward. You all know this: Mīrā was a supreme devotee. She gave up attachment to the world and attachment to the body, and with joy she sang of Kṛṣṇa's līlās without ceasing. But her brother-in-law, attached to the body and attached to the world, did not like this. He felt that for the Mahārāṇā's wife to go about singing songs in public was a disgrace to the royal family itself. He believed that to remember God was a disgrace, and that to court the world was the only honour. So one day he mixed a deadly poison in milk and handed it to her.