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earnestness to make any real effort for it. And the jeweler, who knew the real value of the precious stone but offered only eight hundred rupees, is like an advanced soul who knows the real worth of eternal life, but who wants to have it without giving its real price, which is the surrenderance of separate ego-life. He expects to cheat the Master by offering to do many other things which fall considerably short of his minimum standard.
The Sage then closed as follows, "And you, my dear man, are like those unfortunate ones who refuse to learn from experience. In your successive errands, you had ample opportunity to note that the stone which I had given you was being valued at an increasingly higher rate, as you went to more and more thoughtful persons. But you still cling to your initial belief that it had no value. You further had the audacity to throw away a really valuable thing in your desperateness. You need more experience and need to learn from that experience and also from the experience of others. Come to me after sufficient experience."
Those who can appreciate the real worth of the life spiritual are few. But even among these few, most persons continue to be swayed by petty considerations to which they feel constrained owing to dispositional inclinations.
They miss the opportunities of assimilating in their own lives the great values which they perceive as being true. The most that they do about these values is to talk or write about them for others, or think about them as an entertaining way of filling their idle hours. Value is not value unless it is lived. When a man is merely revolving the idea of value in the mind, this idea is exactly like any other purely intellectual concept, - a toy to play with.
The energy which is expanded in mere thinking, talking or writing is like the steam, which escapes through the whistle of the railway engine. It makes noise and is interesting, but it cannot drive the engine itself, even to the extent of one inch. No amount of whistling can move the engine onwards. The steam has to be harnessed intelligently and used in order that it may actually take the engine to its destination. That is why the sages have all along insisted on practice rather than theory. This is particularly true of those who want to know and realize God.
(continued in Volume 12 Number 2 Page 23)
The real untouchables and those who cannot enter the temple of their own hearts and see the Lord therein.
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