So much is written these days about the potential of the human being. What exactly does that 'potential' mean to you?

Ans : Gurudev, for example, was an extraordinary combination of selflessness, service, devotion, divine love, prayer and worship, but he was also a combination of discipline, self-control, conquest of mind, concentration and meditation. He was a person of great austerities, a singer of the divine name, a bhakta, a jnani, a super karma yogi and one who had mastered his mind. How did this happen? On the one hand, he was like any other person. He was educated, had a profession and a successful career. What is it that made him a world figure; what was it he did that set him apart? God gave him something, and he put it to the best use. He carefully cultivated it. In the thirteenth chapter of the Gita, Lord Krishna makes a significant statement to Arjuna: "This body is known as the field." A field is a place, an area, which has the potential to produce a certain harvest. If you labour, if you do the needful to arouse this potential, then it will bring forth many useful things. This means that we have to have a deep desire to put whatever we have been granted to the highest use, to do all that is necessary, to labour hard, to provide it with that triggering factor, and to do all that is necessary to bring out what it is capable of bringing out. And this body, this human personality is a field capable of producing a rich golden harvest, provided we diligently work upon it and put to the highest and best use whatever has been received.

This should be our objective. But then, we must be fully aware of one significant fact about this field, which is that our body, mind and personality are neutral-neither good nor bad. What this potential for producing will give you depends upon what you put into it, how you utilise it. It is like your echo. Whatever you call out, good or bad, comes back to you. Whatever you create is what you have. What are you presently engaged in? What is the quality of your secret thoughts, seemingly unknown, but known to the Being who indwells you? Your future, your destiny, what you produce for yourself and others, depends upon the quality of your hidden thoughts and the various attitudes you cultivate towards the world and the things and beings that are in the world around you. These thoughts can make you happy or miserable. They can create within you light or darkness, heaven or hell. Therefore, be wise. Be aware of this fact. Be your own greatest benefactor. May your right labours, in the right direction, with the right intention and the right objective be your own greatest benediction, your own greatest blessing.

Decide. How will you work? What will you bring forth from this field that God has given you? This the field cannot decide. It is the one that labours that has to decide. If you make the right use of this field of the human personality for the good of all and for your own highest blessedness, then there is no power on earth that can deny you what is due to you, that can prevent you from getting what you have worked for.