Chapter 6
“Wherever you find a great soul of immense power and purity struggling to raise humanity, know that he is born of My splendour and that I am there working through him!” Only the ignorant, the skeptical and the willfully blind will not accept it. With the hour rises the man, who is to help forward the cause.
This is the time to decide our future – while we possess the energy of the youth, not when we are worn out and jaded but in the freshness and vigour of youth. Work – for this is the time; for the freshest, untouched and unsmelled flowers alone are to be laid at the feet of the Lord, and such He receives. Rouse yourself! for this life (present) is short, and death being certain, let us take up a great ideal and give up our whole life to it; it is a great thing to give up one’s life for a great cause. Let it be our determination and may the Lord who comes again and again for the salvation of His people, bless and lead us to the fulfillment of our aim. Fight on bravely! Life is short! Give it up to a great cause. Be brave! be brave! man dies but once.
One should in fact offer oneself at the altar of the mother when the flower of youth is in full bloom. It would be a sacrilege to offer a faded and jaded flower at the feet of one’s chosen deity. This is how we should live and die.
Awake and arise! What matters if this little life goes? Every one has to die, the saint and the sinner, the rich and the poor. The body never remains for anyone. Arise and awake and be perfectly sincere. Our insincerity in India is awful; what we want is character, that steadiness of character which makes a man cling on to a thing like grim death. Arise and awake, for the time is passing and all our energies will be frittered away in vain talking. Arise and awake, let minor things and quarrels over little details and fights over little doctrines be thrown aside, for here is the greatest of all works, here are the sinking millions.
Life is short and time is flying. I am so sorry that you are losing sight of that.
What is the use of resting during the youth only to prolong one’s life up to old age when the body becomes useless for any active work? It is not length of life but depth of life that matters. It is better to flame forth for one instant than to smoke for ages!
How can I talk of rest now? I shall have rest awhile only when I give up this body, when I cease to live in this body.
“My vow of life is to think of your welfare, my countrymen! The day that vow will be fulfilled, I shall leave this body and make a straight run up”.
The right time for starting or doing an appropriate thing is just now and not tomorrow.
Do your best you can, do not wait to cross the river when the water has all run down.
Do not delay a moment. Leave nothing for tomorrow. Get ready for the final event – death, which may overtake you any moment.
Do not tarry – the time of death is approaching day by day! Do not sit idle thinking that everything will be done in time, later on! Mind – nothing will be done that way! Now or never is the time.
The life is short and the vanities of the world are of two days so they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive. So let us pray to the Lord to make our noble hearts feel more intensely for the suffering millions of our populace who are sunk in destitution and ignorance and let us patiently raise our national life on the strong pillars of character, love and sincerity.
“Ours not to reason why, ours but to do or die”. If, even we shrink from working for the salvation of the sinful, the humiliated and the afflicted souls, who else are to take care of them in this world? Therefore, we should not shirk from our duties, but should do them manfully without thinking for results. The servant has no right to question, the soldier has no right to reason.
What you understand as true and good, just do that at once. God is the only dispenser of results; leave it to Him to do that, what you have got to do with it. His work, He knows!
Take heart, we will try to do what we can for the good of humanity, rest depends on the Lord.
Things will, of course, take their own shape. We only make ourselves miserable by moping. His work He knows, you and I are but servants and nothing else.
Mother is doing Her work. I do not worry much. Moths like me die by thousands every moment; Her work goes on all the same!
Whoever will assist in this work of the Divine Mother of the Universe will have Her grace and whoever will oppose it will not only be raising a deadly enemy for nothing, but also laying axe to his own prospects in good time. Their true well-being ruined, both present and prospective.
For the work of the Lord does not wait for the likes of you and me. He can raise his workers from the dust by hundreds and thousands. It is a glory and privilege that we are allowed to work at all under Him. We are here ourselves at His pleasure.
We will do great things for the world, and that too only for the sake of doing good and not for name and fame. So be of good cheer and believe that we are selected by the Lord to do great things and we will do them as we are born to do it. Have faith!
I obey the leading of the Lord. I am in His hands and He cannot let me go before His work is done – and that is the secret.
I will go back when I get the command.
Let him, who is pure and has courage in his mind and love in his heart, come with me. Through God’s grace, single handed, I am worth a hundred thousand now and will be worth two millions.
The world is in need of those whose life is one of burning love, selfless.