Mother,
Only the brave can make tyāga. The coward, afraid of the whip, wipes his eyes with one hand and gives with the other: what good is his giving? Prema for the whole world is a long way off. A sapling has to be fenced round and tended. If you can learn to love one person unselfishly, then little by little you may hope for a prema that takes in the universe. When there is bhakti for one particular Iṣṭa-devatā, then little by little love for the vast Brahman can come.
So only when you can make tyāga of yourself for one person is it right to talk of tyāga for society, and not before. It is out of sakāma that niṣkāma comes. If there were no desire first, could there ever be tyāga of it? And what would that tyāga even mean? Without darkness, could light ever mean anything?
Sakāma pūjā with prema comes first. The pūjā of the small comes first; after that the great will come of itself.
Mother, don't worry. It is the big tree that catches the big storm. Stir the logs and the fire burns higher; strike a snake on the head and then it rears its hood; and so on. When a terrible anguish comes into the heart, when storms of sorrow rise on every side, when it seems I will never see the light this time round, when hope and trust are all but gone, it is then, out of the midst of this great ādhyātmika storm, that the light of Brahman hidden within flashes forth. Who ever became great eating cream and butter, sleeping on cotton, never shedding a single tear? Whose Brahman ever blossomed like that? Why are you afraid to cry? Cry. Only by crying and crying do the eyes clear; only then comes the inner sight; only then, slowly, do man and beast and tree and plant fall away, and in their place there is Brahma-darśana everywhere. Then,
seeing Īśvara present alike everywhere, one does not strike at the Ātman with the Ātman, and so goes to the highest goal.
Knowing Īśvara as present equally everywhere, one no longer does violence to oneself by oneself, and it is then that one reaches the highest goal.
Ever your well-wisher,
Vivekananda.