Of the few lakhs of candidates who take the IAS examination, two hundred are finally recruited, two thousand pass the written test while only two lakhs pass the entrance. Those who are not selected - 1800 - invariably get another higher job, as the failure in IAS is still a qualification for high non-IAS jobs.
This is not an argument for us to fail. It is to show the preeminence of the Spirit vis-a-vis life. We are in social life, which can be conceived of in at least a hundred levels of hierarchy, starting from the unemployed poor and ending in the highest accomplishment in private or public life. Life hails one who moves a few steps ahead in its own plane, as an employee becoming an MLC or a bank manager becoming a successful SSI entrepreneur. In one sense, all our adventures and aspirations are confined to the five or six social layers just above us.
Mind is above life. It too has a hundred such layers beginning from the illiterate and ending in one whose mental faculties are ripe and mature. Life and mind are not only two successive planes. Mind returning on life - an idea used in business - creates a Software giant of several billions. Higher Mind of the Muni, Illumined Mind of the Rishi, Intuitive Mind of the yogi, Overmind of the gods, Supermind in Time, Supermind in timelessness are there between Man at the bottom and the Spirit at the top.
The Force on earth since 1956 enables us to call the Spirit situated so high and the Spirit itself is eager to respond, while our own highest ambitions are confined to a few levels of life. Let us call the Spirit successfully and be elevated to its regions. Even when we fail, let us know that that failure is still a great, vast success in life.