KARMA YOGA 22

Detachment is not easy for the whole universe impinges on one with all its force threatening to throttle one into submission to the Mayic scheme of things or enchanting one, enticing one into its fold that one may serve as its bondman. It is, thus, a war declared on Maya and the field is the vast expanse of the mind, conscious, sub-conscious et al. The aspirant is not alone. God and Guru are with him as he battles against the terrible forces of the mind in his quest for detachment and peace.

Karma by its very nature is an inducer of attachment and it needs discrimination, understanding and a firm resolve to free oneself off its bonds. Treacherous are the ways of Avidya Maya and it needs great circumspection to avoid its pitfalls. Nature is like a vast mine-field, any moment to explode on one should one false step be taken. 

The night is dark, long is the night and steep is the climb, this ascent of the summit of Truth. Yet, the precipice must be scaled, the foothold must be secure and the flag of freedom hoisted on the summit ere the night darkens further even unto oblivion. It will be sunrise at midnight, this enlightenment of the soul, a la Aurora Borealis.

But the path is long and the way is strewn with the debris of the dead past that impede and disrupt the progress of the soul. Associations, images, shadows and silhouettes, they all crowd the corridors of the mind and seek to reverse the path of the aspirant soul once more into the world of Maya that the play may go on.

A constant vigil is the price of freedom and the aspirant must ever be on his guard as he traverses the treacherous terrain of the Terrible. Every moment is a universe of time, every step a bygone age. And through it all is the work he does of a higher climb and a steeper ascent en route to the Summit of Truth against the attractive field of the universe he leaves behind, a field potent and unrelenting but yielding before the greater potency of the aspirant's will.

And this work is subtle for the subtle bonds of Maya must be severed, and this work is selfless for it must make for the destruction of the phenomenal self that it may help reveal the Cosmic Self of man. And all of this must happen without entanglement in Maya or the creation of fresh karma through attachment or false identification with the phenomenal world.

Every deed, every thought leaves in its wake its impression on the mind-stuff which binds the soul of man. These impressions can hold man only if he works with a finite motive but they have no power to bind the one that works to overcome work, to cut the karmic chains, to attain to immortality and freedom.

For him who has renounced all the fruits of action is reserved Nature's final fruition, the dissolution of universal bonds and the emergence into infinite freedom for the soul as the Self of man. This is the goal and verily, the method of work, karma yoga.