Introduction to the Upanishads - 5. Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday 09, June 2024 06:25.
Article
Scriptures
Post-5.

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Work becomes purely a spiritual form of worship – only the character of selfhood is introduced into the area of this performance of work, and into the location of the direction towards which your work is motivated. You are serving your own self when you serve humanity. People gibly sometimes say, "Worship of man is worship of God." It is just a way of saying without understanding what they mean. How does man become God? You know very well no man can be equal to God. So how to you say that service of man is equal to service of God?

So merely talking in a social sense does not bring much meaning. It has a significance that is deeper than the social cloak that it bears, namely, the essential being of each person is present in each other person also. So when you love your neighbor as yourself, you are loving that person not because that person is your neighbor in the sense of a nearby person, but because there is a nearness which is spiritual and not merely social. The person is near to me as a spiritual entity, as part of the same self that is me, rather than a nearness that is measurable by distance of yards or kilometers etc.

The spiritual concept of work is the great theme of the Bhagavadgita, which is another subject. The whole theme of the Bhagavadgita is how we can conduct our activity in the sense of a transmutation of all its values into spiritual worship. Actually, service is not service done to anybody else – that term 'else' must be removed from the sentence; it is service done to a larger area of one's own self. This idea can be planted in one's own mind by doing service of any kind, whether it is service of Guru, service of mankind, or work even in an office without laying too much emphasis on the salary aspect, etc. If the administration is well managed, the salary will come of its own accord – you need not cry for it; and this universe is a well-managed organization. It is not a political system which requires amendment of laws and regulations constantly. Everything is systematically ordained, and therefore you need not have any doubt in your mind whether you gain anything at all by doing service in this manner. When you serve your own larger self, which becomes largest when it is a service done to the universe as a whole, virtually you are serving God, because the largest self is God. And it is an expanded form of your own self – this is the point to be borne in mind. This has to be borne in mind again and again because of the fact that this is the subject of the Upanishads.

So this dirt of the mind, so-called, the Mala or the impurity that compels the mind to move in the direction of sense objects, this dirt can be scrubbed off by work, hard work, service, labour – let it be, but done in the spirit of a service done to a larger self of one's own self. Then work becomes worship and Karma becomes Karma Yoga.

A discipline of this kind was instituted in earlier days when it was obligatory on the part of students to serve their Masters and learn under their tutelage. Narada, a master in all the arts and sciences conceivable by the human mind, went humbly to the great divine sage Sanatkumara, as we have recorded in the Chhandogya Upanishad. "I am unhappy, Great Master." "What have you learned already, Narada?" "All the things in the world, all the sciences, astronomy, physics, psychology, axiology, aesthetics, ethics, civics, astrology, economics, politics, religions, philosophy – there is nothing that I do not know. But I have no peace of mind."

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