KARMA YOGA 27

The extremes will have to be avoided if one is to be a Karma Yogi. Sleep, work, intake of food and recreation, all of these must be held in moderation in one's life. The balance of forces is essential to touch the golden mean of life --- Yoga. Union with the divine is not to be achieved by reckless living or by straining of the nervous system through over-exertion and excessively tiresome labour. The human nervous system is highly evolved and delicate, very finely tuned for creative work, and, at its highest level of refinement, has the capacity to realise spiritual truths of the highest order. But it tires and deadens when subjected to an overload of labour, thereby for the while losing its capacity to tune in to higher frequencies of thought so essential in the spiritual pursuit. Thus, disciplined and detached activity is the key element in Karma Yoga. 

The Karma Yogi must be ever fresh and vigorous even though he is ever active. His work must proceed from his soul in a fluid, rhythmic way such that it never is the cause of his losing his inner poise. Knowing Karma to be but the means of Self-realisation and not the goal of life, he beholds the panoramic universe with indifference and is not anxious about the results of his works. He knows that everything phenomenal about him is perishable, impermanent, and he is, thus, not unduly perturbed by changes around him. He does his allotted duty in a dispassionate manner without attachment or aversion and steadily moves towards his goal of the transcendence of all action in the realisation of the Self in a peaceful manner, unhurried and harmonic. His work is an oblation into the fire of the Universal Sacrifice. His work is not for selfish interests but is for the grand cause of self-liberation and world-welfare as he works in the spirit of worshipful service for all. He knows full well that he is but an instrument in the hands of the Divine Shakti, the Mahaprakriti (Cosmic Nature) that works through him to give him the variegated experience of life before he realises the hollowness of all that Nature offers and is absorbed in the Brahman. As such, he realises at a certain point in his karmic evolution that he is neither the doer of work nor has he any right over action for it proceeds from the elements or the modes of Nature and, least of all, has he any right to the fruits of the actions that pass through his system. In point of fact, he realises this as well that his body, mind and senses all belong to Nature and it is these that are involved in the performance of work and not he who is but the witness of all action. This results in true detachment, a dissociation from the effects of work as the Karma Yogi steps aside, so to say, to witness this cosmic spectacle with an even eye, the third eye of Shiva. The drama soon closes in on him to dissolve in him and he is set free. The karmic links are sundered, the clouds of ignorance blown away and the sun shines in all its effulgence as the aspirant is finally united to the divine focus within him, the Satyasya satyam (the Truth of truths). Verily has he become a Karma Yogi at last just when Karma disappears in Knowledge to give the lie to the very name. He has ascended the summit of this cosmic range. Now whither Karma?