Lessons on the Upanishads - 3.5: Swami Krishnananda.

===================================================================================

Sunday 24, November 2024. 06:20.
Upanishads
Chapter 3: Preparation for Upanishadic Study - 5.
Post-21.

===================================================================================

Work becomes purely a spiritual form of worship only when 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 sometimes glibly say, “Worship of man is worship of God.” It is just a manner of speaking, without understanding what they mean. How does man become God? You know very well that no man can be equal to God. So how do you say that service of man is equal to service of God?

Therefore, 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 every other person also. So when you love your neighbor as yourself, you love that person not because that person is your neighbor in the sense of social nearness, but because there is a nearness which is spiritual. The person is near to you as a spiritual entity, as part of the same self that is you, rather than a nearness that is measurable by a distance of yards or kilometers.

The spiritual concept of work is the great theme of the Bhagavadgita. 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 even work 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 organisation. It is not a political system which constantly requires amendment of laws and regulations. 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, can be scrubbed off by work—hard work, service, labour—provided it is 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 master's 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 it is recorded in the Chhandogya Upanishad.

“I am unhappy, great Master,” said Narada.

“What have you learned already, Narada?” asked the sage Sanatkumara.

“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,” replied Narada.

The great Master said: “All this that you have learned is only words. You have not gone to the depths of things; the Atman has not been studied. You have only collected words, names and information about the outer structure of things. The name and the form complex of things have been made available to you by the studies that you have enumerated just now, as a series of learning.”

Likewise, in the Upanishads we have instances of great seekers humbly moving towards sages and saints for the purpose of making themselves fit to receive this knowledge. Even after achieving considerable success in purifying the mind of this dross of its tendency to move in the direction of objects of sense—by duty, by service, by unselfish work— the mind will refuse to concentrate on this subject. It has, as I mentioned, very fleeting ideas, one of which is what I have been enumerating just now.

*****

Continued

=========================================================================================