serve the nation

8/14/2019 Serve the Nation

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With five hundred men.the conquest of India might

take fifty years; with as many women, not more than a few

weeks.

We have to learn from others.

So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold

every man a traitor who, having been educated at their

expense, pays not the least heed to them.

So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold

every man a traitor who, having been educated at their

expense, pays not the least heed to them.

First bread and then religion. We stuff them too much with

religion, when the poor fellows have been starving. No

dogmas will satisfy the cravings of hunger..Youmay talk doctrines by the millions, you may have sects by the

hundreds of millions; ay, but it is nothing until you have

the heart to feel. Feel for them as your Veda teaches you, till

you find they are parts of your own bodies, till you realise

that you and they, the poor and the rich, the saint and the

sinner, are all parts of One Infinite Whole, which you call

Brahman.

Only have faith. Do not look up to the so called richand great; do not care for the heartless intellectual

writers, and their cold-blooded newspaper articles.

Faith, sympathy-fiery faith and fiery sympathy! Life is

nothing, death is nothing, hunger nothing, cold nothing.

Glory unto the Lord----------march on, the Lord is our

General.

The one vital duty incumbent on you, if you really love

your religion, if you really love your country, is that

you must struggle hard to be up and doing, with this

one great idea of bringing out the treasures from your

closed books and delivering them over to their

rightful heirs.


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My idea is to bring to the poor of the meanest, the

poorest, the noble ideas that the human race has

developed both in and out of India, and let them think

for themselves.

Feel, my children, feel; feel for the poor, the ignorant,the downtrodden; feel till the heart stops and the brain

reels and you think you will go mad------------then pour

the soul out at the feet of the Lord, and then will come

the power, help, and indomitable energy.

Who will bring light to the poor? Who will travel from

door to door bringing education to them? Let these

people be your Godthink of them, work for them,

pray for them incessantly. The Lord will show you theway.

All the wealth of the world cannot help one little Indian

village, if the people are not taught to help themselves.

Our work should be mainly educational, both moral and

intellectual.

Do something for the nation; then they will help you,

then the nation will be with you.

We have not done badly in the past, certainly not. Weare not bad but good, only I want you to be better still.

Think not that you are poor; money is not power,but

goodness, holiness.

May I be born again and again, and suffer thousands

of miseries, so that I may worship the only God that

exists, the only God I believe in, the sum total of all

souls; and above all, my God the wicked, my God the

miserable, my God the poor of all races, of allspecies, is the special object of my worship.

Truce to all quarrels and jealousies and bigotry!

These will spoil everything.


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Rouse yourselves, therefore, or life is short. There are

greater works to be done than aspiring to become

lawyers and picking quarrels and such things.

Then only will India awake, when hundreds of large-

hearted men and women, giving up all desires ofenjoying the luxuries of life, will long and exert

themselves to their utmost for the well-being of the

millions of their countrymen who are gradually sinking

lower and lower in the vortex ofdestitution and

ignorance.

Give up jealousy and conceit. Learn to work unitedly

for others. This is the great need of our country.

Love makes no distinction between man and man,between an Aryan and a Mlechchha, between a

Brahmana and a Pariah, nor even between a man and a

woman. Love makes the whole universe as ones own

home. True progress is slow but sure. Work among

those young men who can devote heart and sole to this

one duty------------the duty of raising the masses of

India. Awake them, unite them, and inspire them with

this spirit of renunciation. It depends on wholly on theyoung people of India.

What we want are brave young men, who will work;

not tomfools.


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