You can serve human beings all your life and you still remain what you are. So how does it help us? The problem is to serve yourself first and then become more and more capable of serving humanity. When you reach a certain level where you can serve them in the highest possible fashion, and obey the Master's instruction to serve humanity, then by serving humanity, we serve God. Not till then. So, for jana seva(service to public) to become Prabhu seva(service to God) i.e., for human service to become the service of God, one must be a servant of God, serving human beings out of a concern of his own, arising for human beings.

We have to act on that which has to be acted upon, in the plane of its existence. If a person is hungry and if you want to fulfil his hunger, you have to give him food. You cannot give him platitudes and send him away with a few good thoughts. No doubt, he will benefit from those thoughts later, but only when his stomach is full. So, therein hinges the philosophy of social service, for instance. But in spirituality, my Master considers sthoola social service, that is, concretized social service, giving of alms, giving of cloths to the poor, things like that, as the lowest level of service that we can offer each other. And, my Master used to say that it is not really service, it is our duty.

So, it is in some way an arrogance to think that we are serving someone, when we are merely doing our duty to our brothers and sisters. At our level of human beings, we should have this idea that we are the common children of a father, sharing a common destiny, some aspiring, some not aspiring, some willing to aspire, some willing to be taught, some teaching - so this is a mutual service or duty that we perform to each other, in educating each other, in trying to bring up each other, in trying to make each other evolve, mutually sustaining one relationship with only one thing, that is, our LOVE for each other.

Continue ...