Earnest Yearning is an Invitation to a Saint
We shall feel the need for a saint only when we feel disgust for the unsaintly. Sensuous matters continually plague us, but we do not see how to get rid of them. Only he who feels he has lost his trail in a forest will think of inquiring about the right way. We shall keenly feel the need to meet a saint only when we feel that we are advanced in age, that death may claim us any moment, and that Rama is our sole support. Outwardly we seek the company of the saintly, but inwardly we are all for worldly things. We have to go to a saint in order to forget our 'self', for that means remembering God. We feel anxious in the absence of a letter from a relative who is away; do we feel equally anxious to meet God who has been away from us since our very birth? We perform nama-smarana, but have we ever cared to know the One whose nama we take? How can we meet Rama so long as we cling to His opposite, namely, the sensual world? How can we simultaneously have both when the two are mutually antithetical?
We cannot renounce action so long as we are conscious of the body; only, while acting, we should ascribe all authorship to God.
One who has realised the Truth will talk little or not at all about it. Another may have experienced the reality, but may talk about it only because otherwise we, the poor ignoramuses, will never know what It is. But those who indulge in empty, pedantic verbosity only, without any first-hand experience of the Ultimate Truth, are the lowest order of men. That man alone can lead the world who neither deceives others nor permits himself to be deceived.
Some saints hurl stones or abuses at others, and are still followed by people, because even such actions from them turn out to be blessings. There are many, however, who do not realise this. A father may smack his own child while he condones another's for the same offence; this is because he has his child's true interest at heart. A saint's heart always overflows with concern for the weak of the world. He has no selfishness, and is sincere and solicitous to the core. We must, therefore, place full trust in what he says.
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