Now the question is, how can one attain to the right mentality? By right thinking, by right speaking, by right activity. And what is right in this matter? The answer is: that which causes pleasure to begin, which is easy to do, which causes happiness in its accomplishments. And what is wrong? When one begins with fear, when one continues with doubt, and when one finishes with remorse.

Then sometimes one does not see in the beginning what is right and what is wrong. In the end one sees. But why is it? It is because of negligence; it is not because one has not got the sense to realize it. If there was no sense of discerning right or wrong, man would never have been made responsible for his action, neither by man nor by God.

How can one learn it [i.e. discerning right and wrong] ? One can learn it by consulting with oneself, by consulting with one’s innermost being before one takes a step in any direction. And be sure that the one who lives aright will be guided in the right path and his life will be easy and safe.

But one who does not care, intoxicated by the momentary intoxication of life, it is he who slides on to the wrong track. One may realize this after one experience.  A man who does not learn his lesson from one experience is slow. A person who does not learn his lesson after two experiences, he is to be pitied.  And the one who does not learn his lesson after three experiences is hopeless.  

To act rightly, one needs love – love for doing what is right. In little things one can practice this in keeping one’s room tidy, in dressing, in writing a letter, in every little thing one does in life, if one has the desire to do it rightly, that makes right mentality. And when man neglects in small things, in everyday life, to finish as nicely as he ought to have finished, by his carelessness, his negligence, in big things it is the same. In the things which are of great importance, great value in life, there also he shows his negligence.  When there is a little hole in the cloth, it becomes a larger and larger hole in time. When it is little it does not come to his notice. He does not think anything of it. He thinks it does not matter, and so he maintains it. He nourishes it, and there will come one day when it will become so large that he will be frightened at its sight.

In the schools today there is education given of geography, of grammar, of history, and many more things, and the most important educaton which must be given from childhood to the children, to the youths, is of cultivating their hearts, the love of right-doing, of right-thinking, which would make out of them ideal men and women, the lack of which humanity is feeling more and more. If only in the world we were right thinking people, if there were a majority of it, the right mentality, humanity would not have suffered such tests of late. All diesases and catastrophes and misfortunes are mostly brought about by wrong mentality.

In the life of individuals and in the life of multitudes people do not know at the moment, because every thing takes time to work out its results, and as man does not get the answer to his right doing and wrong doing at the same moment, he thinks, “There is not such a thing as result, there is only action.” There is an action which results immediately, and another action after a long time, in a year’s time, in ten years, in twenty years. But there is no action which has no result. There is no voice which has no echo. And when the time of results comes, the person is surprised. He has forgotten; he does not know what has been the cause of this result. The right thought leads to all that is right, from one right thing to the other right thing. It attracts benefit, first one benefit and then a greater benefit. And the wrong attitude has its wrong results; as the time passes, it becomes worse and worse and worse. Then a person becomes so perplexed that he cannot see good in any thing, he cannot see right anywhere, it is all wrong, until the life becomes so burdensome that even God the Creator seems wrong. Why did He create the soul? The whole affair of life seems to him to be wrong because it is himself who has become all wrong; it has turned all wrong. It is never too late in life to change that attitude.

Man has a spark of divine light in him. Constantly there is the voice of the divine guidance in him, and it is not true that now it is too late to change one’s attitude. To change the attitude for a person is as easy as changing sides. All that is necessary to study life and to cultive that sense of discernment between right and wrong; and to grow to learn to appreciate the beauty of what is called right; and by constantly doing this, man strikes the right path which will result in attaining the desired goal.

To be continued …