Page 16 - All India Magazine Jan-2026

different; and we can understand one thing, it is that the
best means (though we do not know it quite well yet), is
we ourselves, isn’t it? And surely you know yourself better
than you know your neighbour — you understand better
the consciousness manifested in a human being than that
manifested in the stars, for instance. So, after a little hesita-
tion you could say, “After all, the best means is what I am. I
don’t know very well what I am, but this kind of collection of
things that I am, this perhaps is my work, this is perhaps my
part of the work, and if I do it as well as I can, perhaps I shall
be doing the best I can do.” This is a very big beginning, very
big. It is not overwhelming, not beyond the limits of your
possibilities. You have your work at hand, it is always within
your reach, so to say, it is always there for you to attend to it
— a field of action proportionate to your strength, but varied
enough, complex, vast, deep enough to be interesting. And
you explore this unknown world.
Many people tell you, “But then this is egoism!” It is ego-
ism if you do it in an egoistic way, for your personal profit,
if you try to acquire powers, to become powerful enough to
influence others, or if you seek means to make a comfort-
able life for yourself. Naturally, if you do it in this spirit, it
will be egoistic. But the beauty of it is that you will not get
anywhere! You will begin by deceiving yourself, you will live
in increasing illusions and you will fall back into a greater and
greater obscurity. Consequently, things are organised much
better than one thinks; if you do your work egoistically (we
have said that our field of work is always within our reach),
it will come to nothing. And hence the required condition is
to do it with an absolute sincerity in your aspiration for the
realisation of the divine work. So if you start like that I can as-
sure you that you will have such an interesting journey that

16 All India Magazine, January 2026