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this world and conduct yourselves as seekers of Truth has to
be in terms of the involvement of your consciousness in the
stages of ascent and descent. Ascent is the progressive march
of the soul to the Supreme Being; descent is the evolution of
the world from God down to the earth, down to the lowest
atom.
We are physically involved, from the outermost part of
our personality. Nobody can forget that there is a body. You
may be essentially pure, unadulterated consciousness, but
the physical body hangs very heavily upon this
consciousness; therefore it is that you have a weight.
Consciousness has no weight, and the mind also cannot be
measured on a weighing scale. It is the body that is heavy; it
is a concentrated mass of location, involving a pattern of
material forces in which the consciousness, which is your
real nature, is involved. It has to be counted, taken care of.
Even a naughty child in a family is not to be totally ignored as
if it is non-existent. An intractable, disobedient and naughty
boy in the house is not an irrelevant item in the house; he has
to be taken care of and put to the pattern of the wholeness of
the family structure. If some part of the body is sick, we do
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not cut it off; we see that it is healed and made part and
parcel of the wholeness of our personality.
Likewise, the involvement of your consciousness in your
physicality is to be taken care of by an adjustment which is in
a state of harmony with the physical structure. The body is
very active; the senses are active. The senses and the body
work together. Actually, the body moves on account of the
vibrations set up by the sense organs. This activity is
perpetual. Nobody can keep quiet without doing something.
This is what the Gita has said: na hi kascit ksanam api jatu
tisthaty akarmakrt (Gita 3.5). You cannot sit quiet without
doing something. A little bit of action, a little bit of your
movement is unavoidable. This is so because there is an
agitation created in ourselves by the preponderance of what
is called rajas the distracting and active part of prakriti, the
matrix of all things. There are three qualities, or properties,
of prakriti: sattva, rajas and tamas. We are not always in a
state of sattva; clarity of perception and the feeling of
satisfaction and happiness within are not always given to us.
We are mostly turbulent in our personality, agitated and
distracted. To put down this agitating medium in ourselves
we have to employ certain means which are commensurate
with this agitation. This is the work that we perform in a
harmonious manner. The agitation, which is also a kind of
activity, can be subdued only by another kind of activity, as a
disease is cured by homeopathic medicines of a character
similar to the disease already prevailing in the body. Similia
similibus curantur: Like cures like. Action can be controlled
only by action; diamond can be cut by diamond. This is a
psychological secret in the approach to things, generally.
But what kind of action is it that can subdue agitated
activity? A wholesome action. While it is true that karma, or
action, binds, it is also true that certain karmas liberate. Na
karma lipyate nare (Isa 2), says the Isavasya Upanishad.
Action cannot bind the human being, provided it is oriented
in the light of the omnipresence of God. Isavasyam idam
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sarvam (Isa 1). Otherwise, every action will produce a
reaction. The fruit of action, the binding power of action, is
nothing but the reaction set up by action which is motivated
by externality and conditioned by space and time and
objectivity.
So it should be wholesome, God-oriented work. It is
work, of course underline it. It is nevertheless work; God-
oriented work is the means of putting down work that causes
agitation. Binding action can be subdued by liberating action.
This is known as karma yoga. Karma yoga is the art of
uniting oneself with God Himself through action. You may be
wondering how action can contact God, inasmuch as every
activity is directed towards some objective that is ulterior.
This is not the kind of action that we are referring to here,
when we talk of God-oriented activity. The Bhagavadgita is
difficult to understand. It is not easy to make out its meaning
when we are asked to do work in a liberating manner. A
wholesome work spiritually conditioned work, God-
oriented work, unselfish work, perfected alignment of
oneself in work will liberate you from the disadvantages of
ordinary work.
You are also very busy every day. Everybody is doing
work of some kind or the other, but they are binding works.
The consequence of an action will tell upon you so heavily
that afterwards you may repent for having done it. As the
Gita tells us, the result of an action is not entirely in our
hands. Even if the farmer takes all precaution to plough the
field and sow the seed and pour water and manure it, it does
not follow that it will yield the harvest. Other factors must
also cooperate, such as rain, climate, sunlight and many other
things which are of a natural character. Inasmuch as the fruit
of an action is not in our hands it is determined by forces
which are cosmic in their nature it is unwise on the part of
any person to expect a particular result from a particular
action. This is what the Bhagavadgita is telling us.
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Therefore, by very carefully manoeuvring your life in this
world through well-ordered activity, dissociating it from the
idea of any fruit accruing therefrom, you will find yourself in
harmony with two things at the same time. You are in
harmony with Reality because of the wholesome character of
your work. You are also in harmony with the agitations
which are caused by rajo-guna prakriti in your personality so
that you oppose neither the prevailing conditions at the
present moment by way of rajasic work, nor do you oppose
the conditions imposed upon you by the nature of Reality.
You are a friend of this world, and also a friend of the other
world.
This is the preliminary step that one can take in the
practice of spiritual life: karma yoga. By karma alone is
karma controlled and overcome. When your mind is active,
the physical body craves for work of some kind or the other.
Keeping quiet without doing anything physically, but
mentally brooding, is not supposed to be action which is
liberating. This is what the Gita has told us.
After having attained some kind of mastery over this
technique of conducting yourself in the world of action, you
may take to concentration, which is called upasana. You
cannot take to meditation, worship upasana or devotion, as
it is called directly, when your mind is distracted or
agitated. Agitations are caused by disharmony with nature,
disharmony with human society, disharmony with one s own
psycho-physical individuality. You can bring to your memory
what I told you yesterday. Alignment of the psycho-physical
individuality within, harmony with society and a kind of
concordance with nature as a whole is expected. Until this is
achieved, direct meditational work may not be of much
success. There are varieties of prejudices in the minds of
people; everybody has a prejudice. You prejudge things from
your own point of view and foist your ideas upon things
outside. This is the dirt that is in the mind; it is called mala.
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It is believed that the mind has three defects, known in
Sanskrit as mala, vikshepa and avarana. Mala is the dirt
which covers the mind like dust covering a clean mirror;
thereby, the mirror cannot reflect light. And even if the dust
is removed, the glass may be broken and it may not give you
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