In plain words
Unless Rajas and Tamas Go, the Sattva-guṇa Will Not Stay
You long for sattva, saying, ‘I want sattva, sattva.’ Without giving up the tāmasa, how will sattva settle. Without giving up the rājasa, Bhakti does not come. If we fill our hearts with rājasic feelings, hatred, envy and pride, such anger, such rājasic feelings, and say, ‘Let Bhakti come, let Bhakti come’, how will it come? Bhakti is supremely sweet. Bhakti is supremely sāttvic; how will a thing like this enter into such hardness. If a tiger goes into a fold full of cows, will even one cow be left? Nothing is left. Though all these sāttvic things are in us, if wild beasts like tigers, these rājasic ones called anger, hatred, envy and pride, get in here. What becomes of the sāttvic cows. So if you have deep faith and śraddhā that you must reach God, cultivate Prema. Do not cultivate hatred. There is Prema. That Prema itself is your life-breath. That Prema itself is your life. That Prema itself is your God. How are we to come to know that Prema? We must come to know it through the spiritual principle. Whatever the mind imagines, that which it has imagined must be put away. Now look. A cow that has grown thin and weak, if it is given in many ways the grass and fodder that suit it, becomes very sturdy in a while. If we do not give that cow the food we ought to give it every day, it grows thin and falls down. In just the same way, this mind drowns man in every way. We give this mind too much importance. We honour this mind too much. We provide the comforts this mind wants. Thinking this mind itself is our God, we install it on a big throne. So this mind grows big and stout.