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THE METHOD AND THE MEANS.
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vorous animals. The man who will mercilessly cheat widows and orphans, and do the vilest deeds for money, is worse than any brute, even if he lives entirely on grass alone. The man whose heart never cherishes even the thought of injury to any one, who rejoices at the prosperity of even his greatest enemy, that man is a Bhakta, that man is a Yogin. He is the Guru of all, even though he lives every day of his life on the flesh of swine. Therefore we must always remember that external practices have value only as helps to develop internal purity. It is better to attempt for internal purity alone when minute attention to external observances is not practicable. But woe unto the man and woe unto the nation, that forgets the real, the internal, the spiritual essentials of religion, and mechanically clutches with death-like grasp all the external forms of it and never lets them go. The forms have value only so far as they are the expressions of the life
