Summary: Emphasises that care should be given to all works and not only to those benefiting us personally. Explains that expansion from the smaller self to the larger universal self is one of the crucial objectives of sadhana. Further teaches that Yoga means freedom from outer dependencies, for one’s happiness.

X reads the sentence of the day: ‘To do with care all that one does is the basis of all progress.’ – Giridharji

So not only when you cook pasta which you like, but with other things too you should take care. For Italians to cook pasta is like worship, totally centred and present, completely focused, heightened awareness, all the sense-juices overflowing. But this is how it should be for anything and everything that you do. That is taking care for all that one does, not only things that we prefer. Care, basically, care – this is the word, this is the keyword here, to take care, to do things with care.

And when do you take care, why would you take care? Care, that is the keyword in the statement because we tend to care preferentially. That is the thing. A personal preference, relation, profit, liking or disliking, taste or distaste decides when, why, if and how much we care. An identification of our egoistic connections and needs. We care because it affects us personally, an egoistic need. To whatever extent we perceive it to be personal, to that extent we care. And that is the illusion. The smaller the person, the smaller the field of the perceived personal self; the larger the person, the larger therefore is the field of his care. This is normal and ordinary. It is no crime, it is no sin, although many a crime and sin and corruption of commissions and omissions have their origin here and it smallifies our existence. But can you expand yourself, can you universalise your care? You care if it is personal. You care if it gives self-importance, you care if you are complimented! If it is my work I care, if it is for me and I am going to benefit from it, I care! If it is for my relation, I care! But if somebody else is benefiting from it, would you care and care as much? Okay, you care if the fellow has been good to you, is a friend or is related to you – then you care. The ‘I’ connection comes in again. You care because you are related, you care because it is to do with you. Would you care if it was a stranger? Would you care as much if the thing did not profit you personally even an iota, without complaining, if it was so required?

Here you have to go beyond your personal smaller existence and so do the work, it does not matter to whom it belongs. You respect the work for its own sake. That word is very important – care – because there is no condition attached to it. In fact you should care so much more, for it makes you more and can lead you to the supreme inner freedom.

Say, when you love someone, you care for that someone. Okay, this is usual, this is personal. So then, when you do something for that person automatically there is care involved because you love that someone. So if you love the whole wide world, if you love because that is the nature of your being, your self and Reality – for there is one Reality in all of us – whatever you do for whomsoever it may be, stranger or otherwise, it would be with care. This would be universalising the personal love and care. Ultimately you know, it reaches to the point where you care even for the enemy. Christ, although extremely intolerant and unforgiving of corrupt priests and those using the temple, ‘His Father’s house’, for business and profiteering instead of worship, setting an unholy precedence therefore for the people, forgave his persecutors all the crime they had committed personally upon him. Karna gave away his protective armour thereby signing his own death warrant for the integrity of his self-giving. Sri Rama respectfully, with honour and care cremated the bodies of his defeated ignoble enemies, acknowledging their bravery after they were dead in spite of the disagreement of his companions. Because there is the Divine in all, the one Reality that is in us is there in all, although what the person is manifesting as prakṛiti on the outside may not be very likable, so much so that it can be even mightily repulsive and deplorable! But your sight and therefore care goes beyond that.

So this is where you would reach ultimately. It does not mean you would not respond to the person’s immediate temperament and behaviour and deal with it per se, like Rama did with Ravana whom he vanquished and killed. And like Guru Gobind Singh, who accommodated without inhibition deceptive assassins into his sangat¹ even though sent by his sworn enemy Wazir Khan – the killer of his two younger sons and the cause of the death of his mother – with the sole purpose of killing him. Yet later, when mortally stabbed in his sleep, He unhesitatingly struck one dead with his sword while the other was killed by his companions. When you go beyond these things it does take you beyond your smaller self and to a larger and universal self. Then you can work and act from there. So that is the secret, that is the basis of growth, because then you immediately expand.

Say you want to eat pasta, so you take great care for it is something you like. And you are making something else also which somebody else likes and you don’t, but you care as much when you make it – so that your caring has expanded; then you have expanded yourself. That is the idea. And in that there should be a spontaneity also. Now you are being spontaneous only from a certain field of your smaller self, but that field can increase. The larger you make yourself, the larger you become; the larger you make your ‘I’, the larger will you be, that is the idea. This expansion is one of the objectives of your meditation, your way of working and your life as a sadhak, as a sadhana; that you expand so much that even this earth is like a mustard seed in the palm of your hand – you are the cosmos! Then even in your daily interactions it would reflect. You embrace everything because it is all Brahman, it is all one Reality even in all its differentiations and diversities. Now, whenever you discriminate, differentiate, ordinarily it is isolating, competing, selective, divisive, reductive, and even partial.

That is why that word ‘care’ is important. So, how much do we care? How little do we care? What have been the limits of our care? This needs to be constantly inquired into and analysed with limits needing to be broken each time, to expand and exceed oneself. That is why I say, work with your limits – limits to your existence – to increase and expand, that is what is meant by abandoning yourself. Ultimately the greatest joy comes when you have abandoned yourself to existence and God, holding nothing back, and you just expand: then you contain infinity in yourself. Now you are finite with your care and your actions and activities. You may have specialised in the type of work you do and therefore you can be caring and efficient. Because you have specialised you can be very efficient and proficient: like a mechanic, or a carpenter, an artisan, a musician, an artist and an administrator is respectively, while in other fields it may not be so. Rather there could be mediocrity, dislike and even distaste for other works and a feeling of drudgery. You specialise only as someone or something, but you can always break limits, increase your field of action, so you become larger. You are not just a specialist in one work and field. You can be a specialist and skilful in many fields with no limits to your skills and fields. That to us is all part of Yoga, an ongoing progression. It is in the attitude. A yogi can take to any and every work – Krishna was like that. He could make his own weapons, he was a skilful rider and a great charioteer, he was a great romancer, beloved, and a loyal friend. He was a great warrior and a great wrestler with a great sense of humour and playful mischief-making. His whole life was a display of skills of all kinds. There is no end to His expressions, fields of action. Whatever He took up, it was in Yoga. He is always increasing himself without inhibitions, without hesitations and without discrimination of any work and with whatever that may present itself at any given moment and time.

A yogi is a specialist in any and every field he takes to and is spontaneous. For him it is all sacred work and Divine will. “Yogaḥ karmasu kauœalam”²: Yoga is skill in works, Yoga is skill in action, Yoga is skilful action. Yoga is an offering of self and action unto God through the means of any and every work, with every work being divine. To take to each and every work whether personal or otherwise as if entering a temple, mosque or a church, a place of worship – with such an attitude and feeling. For work is worship – worship of God.

So that is why here in our community, for our sadhana, we put people in different works, not only in one field of action but also in other fields – to break limits, develop new skills and widen and increase their field of action and consciousness. It opens out new pathways in your nerves in the brain, otherwise they remain unused, untraversed, closed. So you do not live just few grooves, narrow grooves, you open out and become wider. Expansion. Progressive expansion, and in that you should be able to take to different fields spontaneously: no inhibitions, no hesitations, no lack of confidence, no limitations… and you have gone beyond liking and disliking, ultimately to find joy in all that you do, a rejoicing and offering unto God. This is a unique skill to have indeed for life. It is supremely self-liberating. Anything that you take to, it must be like fish taking to water! This is sadhana of works and action. All this is a progression of course and in good time – but done it must be.

It is a joy every time. You rejoice. Nothing can condition you to be unhappy and anxious: whatever is given to you to do you take it as a challenge, as an adventure. Then a certain confidence is developed wherein even if you are handed something totally new you can take to it like fish to water. That is the right attitude of a person developing in Yoga, that is the significance of Yoga. Such a person is always joyful, happy; he or she may be contemplative, may go inward, rise to high levels of consciousness, may become quiet and deeply silent, that is another thing – but certainly does not get into the kind of black moods that people get into ordinarily, so to speak. You go beyond – those things do not exist for you. They exist at a certain level of untransformed human consciousness, but they need to be worked out, so that the joy, the light, the illumination exist even down in the subconscious and further in the dark matter. That is when the body starts getting transformed. Otherwise the work of transformation and realisation of what is to be is incomplete, not fulfilled. The illumination is only up to a point, only up to a level of consciousness, and limited to the above and high mostly if not exclusively, while the lower remains as it is.

So the word is care. How much do we care? What are the limits of our care? That you have to observe, analyse, work out; it is an opportunity. When you work this opportunity is available. When you just sit for meditation it is hardly available for perusal; it is only when you put yourself into action, interaction, that it becomes clearly visible with all its nuances if you were to remember and make yourself so aware. So that is why care. It is a great opportunity to work with yourself: when you are working you are being with yourself, even when you are with the other you are being with yourself, and ultimately the other is also you, you are the other in another form because it is one Reality working out different, unique rhythms. So we care when we make pasta because we like the taste of pasta, don’t worry I too am fond of pasta for that matter, but that care comes from taste and is not independent of it and so is preferential and conditional and binding. There is a care that comes from your self, the being, the true free inner being which is what must finally be sought in spite of and independent of the taste or liking. Taste and liking still being of avail to you without their binding!

The other day we were talking about the senses, how they condition us in our actions, in our interactions, in our relationships; so we live through our senses. But as Krishna says, you can live through the senses but you must live through them as a master, not as a slave. Then the senses also can reach to infinity. Suddenly you will find the same senses enjoying even boiled vegetables for example, which you may have at one time disliked because you become present in your inner being and self. And you start enjoying all works – not only the work you are good at, specialised in, appreciate, like or seemingly profit from – because you are present there and you are the source of all that joy. That is the secret.

You are the centre, you are the joy, you are the source, you are the source of all energies and master of your senses. So that switch has to be made. It is a different way of living – living life through and from Yoga. Yoga means inner freedom from all kinds of slavery, even so to the senses, the likes and dislikes, and raising of life to divinity. This has to be practiced until reached. And that too is the difference between all the other types of exercise and âsanas and mudrâs that are done as Yoga: they are in Yoga. The other exercises are not in Yoga, they are mere physical exercise and activity purely for a physical purpose and utility. It is the purpose that alters the same thing to another level, to an exalted one, makes it complete or just a limited utility. It is always so with anything and everything.

So here this is what we have to learn and practice. That is what is meant by watching, analysing and introspecting all the time how you go about doing things, what your limitations and incapacities are – to see and recognise them and work with them to exceed these limitations and incapacities. Can you break those limits to increase your capacities, to increase your diversity? And also with Yoga you will discover that even new things, you can take to them with a certain amount of skill. It is amazing how spontaneously it comes. This is the power of Yoga. These are the perfections that already exist in you.

Please read it again.

(X reads): ‘To do with care all that one does is the basis of all progress.’

This is the basis. To do with care the thing that you like you have to be present there. Because you like it you are present, because you like doing it you will find yourself being there – that is easy. But it is still a condition: the moment you dislike it you are not there, then it becomes labour, it becomes uncomfortable. All this follows, even resentment, anger, bitter reactions and rebellion, so you have to learn to observe all this and go beyond the negative attitude, bringing in the positive attitude. It needs to be done, it has been given to you so that you learn how to transform yourself, and work with care.

You will also notice that the day when the serial Prison Break is to be screened, suddenly the day is so much happier, everything is working so much smoother, the anticipation, the expectation, ‘Wow you know, something to look forward to’; this is normal behaviour. I do not know if you people notice these things, I very much doubt it. Suddenly in the whole atmosphere there is a buoyancy, the day feels good, life feels so much rosier. But you see, it is a condition: the moment Prison Break finishes you are going to get depressed, if not immediately then after some time or if not depression then the usual feeling of boring drudgery. This is not Yoga – this up-and-down, this elation followed by deflation. The elation is there because of something you like, so it is dependent and conditioned, you see? But Prison Break or anything cannot go on forever for that is the nature of things and the world, even life comes to an end – then what happens? In fact the very thought of it will make you depressed!

Today is Prison Break, so just for the fun of it and as a lesson of learning I may cancel it so that you get used to the idea that things do not always go your way, as per your expectations which you take for granted and the happiness you attach to it. The change in the situation from cancellation of it may bring disappointment, even so from the very thought that it may happen as we even speak of such a possible calamity. Because things in the outside will change, Prison Break will come to an end. Of course then you will look for something else and so it goes on from one thing to the other, a dependence and a slavery, some other thing to keep you going, to keep that elation going without break, hoping and endeavouring to join the happy and exciting dots of life. So that is it; today’s world especially is a world of entertainment and excitement, so it keeps you going. But the moment that excitement is gone, then you feel kind of listless and lifeless, you feel somehow life has no meaning. This is not Yoga. Yoga is unconditional in its elation, Yoga is because of your own self, not for one changing reason or the other that gives you excitement or elation, interspersed with crashes of disappointments, dejections and depressions. That is ordinary life. Yoga is a break from such a prison, a real prison break – pun intended!

To know these things, the nature of things, the nature of life and existence, you observe yourself and your responses to changing outer situations, and the effect they have upon you. To step back within as it were from the responses: happy or unhappy, pleasant or unpleasant, and not be blown away by them. When you are blown away by one, you are lost and blown away by the other. To feel elation is no harm, no sin, you can have your excitements and entertainments, you can have your prison breaks – but be inwardly free of that, not be bound by it because the reason for that particular elation will come to an end. This is the truth. Know this beforehand.

Things may happen, crashing your expectations to dust. Maybe suddenly the DVD player crashes just before the movie; you should see people then! Everybody troops in well before the show like well-disciplined soldiers – but for meditation, for community meetings and the daily work assembly, people have to be sought and coaxed, they take their time and lethargically straggle in, not much vigour, they come in their own laggardly leisure. But for Prison Break everybody is here sprightly and smiling, excitement writ all over their faces and much before time, there is bubbly lightness in the air. But then the DVD crashes, and then you should see the people’s faces: smiles gone you don’t know where, smoke coming out of their ears, their elation and expectations turned to sour disappointment and frustration. Makes me laugh for it is so comical and habitual, as expected! I told you the story of Gurdjieff. Here it happens by itself, I do not have to do anything (laughter), just when you have everything right and ready to go, something comes crashing down. So maybe tonight we can have sitting meditation instead, we will see if we can keep the elation up! (In humour) So what is lunch for me, pasta? No?! That’s a downer! So I have to kind of satisfy myself with Prison Break in the night. I thought I could have a double slam – you know double slam? With pasta for lunch, that is the best day you can have, that is one slam and then Prison Break for evening on the same day, that is another, and so a double slam. Pasta for lunch and Prison Break for the evening, wow! That is the best day you can have! Right! But then tomorrow is another day and what happens then?

So that is it? You want to read it once more?

(X reads): ‘To do with care all that one does is the basis of all progress.’

You can only do it with care if you are present with what you are doing and you are not in a hurry to finish to do something else that you prefer. You may be in a hurry if you have taken upon yourself various activities, but still you respect what you are doing presently. It is like when we do the âsanas and the quick rounds of sûryamudrâ, that is what I say. When you do the quick rounds it does not mean you do not finish each posture. You complete each posture perfectly or as perfectly as you can make it progressively. Otherwise in the hurry you only do it partly and incompletely, you do not complete each posture, each mudrâ, which you should, giving each posture and mudrâ its due. Then this is where right approach starts to work in your mind through practice. It develops an attitude. So even when you are doing things quickly this attitude of the mind will remain with you and it will express itself physically, that is the idea.

Arya Vihar

13 Aug 2009