Chương Chương 6 · REALISATION IN ACTION

. REALISATION IN ACTION

REALISATION IN ACTION

It is only those who have known that joy expresses itself through

law who have learnt to transcend the law. Not that the bonds of

law have ceased to exist for them--but that the bonds have become

to them as the form of freedom incarnate. The freed soul

delights in accepting bonds, and does not seek to evade any of

them, for in each does it feel the manifestation of an infinite

energy whose joy is in creation.

As a matter of fact, where there are no bonds, where there is the

madness of license, the soul ceases to be free. There is its

hurt; there is its separation from the infinite, its agony of

sin. Whenever at the call of temptation the soul falls away from

the bondage of law, then, like a child deprived of the support of

its mother's arms, it cries out, _Smite me not!_ [Footnote: Mā mā

himsīh.] "Bind me," it prays, "oh, bind me in the bonds of thy

law; bind me within and without; hold me tight; let me in the clasp

of thy law be bound up together with thy joy; protect me by thy

firm hold from the deadly laxity of sin."

As some, under the idea that law is the opposite of joy, mistake

intoxication for joy, so there are many in our country who

imagine action to be opposed to freedom. They think that

activity being in the material plane is a restriction of the free

spirit of the soul. But we must remember that as joy expresses

itself in law, so the soul finds its freedom in action. It is

because joy cannot find expression in itself alone that it

desires the law which is outside. Likewise it is because the

soul cannot find freedom within itself that it wants external

action. The soul of man is ever freeing itself from its own

folds by its activity; had it been otherwise it could not have

done any voluntary work.

The more man acts and makes actual what was latent in him, the

nearer does he bring the distant Yet-to-be. In that

actualisation man is ever making himself more and yet more

distinct, and seeing himself clearly under newer and newer

aspects in the midst of his varied activities, in the state, in

society. This vision makes for freedom.

Freedom is not in darkness, nor in vagueness. There is no

bondage so fearful as that of obscurity. It is to escape from

this obscurity that the seed struggles to sprout, the bud to

blossom. It is to rid itself of this envelope of vagueness that

the ideas in our mind are constantly seeking opportunities to

take on outward form. In the same way our soul, in order to

release itself from the mist of indistinctness and come out into

the open, is continually creating for itself fresh fields of

action, and is busy contriving new forms of activity, even such

as are not needful for the purposes of its earthly life. And

why? Because it wants freedom. It wants to see itself, to

realise itself.

When man cuts down the pestilential jungle and makes unto himself

a garden, the beauty that he thus sets free from within its

enclosure of ugliness is the beauty of his own soul: without

giving it this freedom outside, he cannot make it free within.

When he implants law and order in the midst of the waywardness of

society, the good which he sets free from the obstruction of the

bad is the goodness of his own soul: without being thus made free

outside it cannot find freedom within. Thus is man continually

engaged in setting free in action his powers, his beauty, his

goodness, his very soul. And the more he succeeds in so doing,

the greater does he see himself to be, the broader becomes the

field of his knowledge of self.

The Upanishad says: _In the midst of activity alone wilt thou

desire to live a hundred years._ [Footnote: Kurvannēvēha

karmāni jijīvishet çatam samāh.] It is the saying of those who

had amply tasted of the joy of the soul. Those who have fully

realised the soul have never talked in mournful accents of the

sorrowfulness of life or of the bondage of action. They are not

like the weakling flower whose stem-hold is so light that it

drops away before attaining fruition. They hold on to life with

all their might and say, "never will we let go till the fruit is

ripe." They desire in their joy to express themselves

strenuously in their life and in their work. Pain and sorrow

dismay them not, they are not bowed down to the dust by the

weight of their own heart. With the erect head of the victorious

hero they march through life seeing themselves and showing

themselves in increasing resplendence of soul through both joys

and sorrows. The joy of their life keeps step with the joy of

that energy which is playing at building and breaking throughout

the universe. The joy of the sunlight, the joy of the free air,

mingling with the joy of their lives, makes one sweet harmony

reign within and without. It is they who say, _In the midst of

activity alone wilt thou desire to live a hundred years._

This joy of life, this joy of work, in man is absolutely true.

It is no use saying that it is a delusion of ours; that unless we

cast it away we cannot enter upon the path of self-realisation.

It will never do the least good to attempt the realisation of the

infinite apart from the world of action.

It is not the truth that man is active on compulsion. If there

is compulsion on one side, on the other there is pleasure; on the

one hand action is spurred on by want, on the other it hies to

its natural fulfilment. That is why, as man's civilisation

advances, he increases his obligations and the work that he

willingly creates for himself. One should have thought that

nature had given him quite enough to do to keep him busy, in fact

that it was working him to death with the lash of hunger and

thirst,--but no. Man does not think that sufficient; he cannot

rest content with only doing the work that nature prescribes for

him in common with the birds and beasts. He needs must surpass

all, even in activity. No creature has to work so hard as man;

he has been impelled to contrive for himself a vast field of

action in society; and in this field he is for every building up

and pulling down, making and unmaking laws, piling up heaps of

material, and incessantly thinking, seeking and suffering. In

this field he has fought his mightiest battles, gained continual

new life, made death glorious, and, far from evading troubles,

has willingly and continually taken up the burden of fresh

trouble. He has discovered the truth that he is not complete in

the cage of his immediate surroundings, that he is greater than

his present, and that while to stand still in one place may be

comforting, the arrest of life destroys his true function and the

real purpose of his existence.

This _mahatī vinashtih--this great destruction_ he cannot bear,

and accordingly he toils and suffers in order that he may gain in

stature by transcending his present, in order to become that

which he yet is not. In this travail is man's glory, and it is

because he knows it, that he has not sought to circumscribe his

field of action, but is constantly occupied in extending the

bounds. Sometimes he wanders so far that his work tends to lose

its meaning, and his rushings to and fro create fearful eddies

round different centres--eddies of self-interest, of pride of

power. Still, so long as the strength of the current is not lost,

there is no fear; the obstructions and the dead accumulations of

his activity are dissipated and carried away; the impetus corrects

its own mistakes. Only when the soul sleeps in stagnation do its

enemies gain overmastering strength, and these obstructions become

too clogging to be fought through. Hence have we been warned by

our teachers that to work we must live, to live we must work; that

life and activity are inseparably connected.

It is very characteristic of life that it is not complete within

itself; it must come out. Its truth is in the commerce of the

inside and the outside. In order to live, the body must maintain

its various relations with the outside light and air--not only to

gain life-force, but also to manifest it. Consider how fully

employed the body is with its own inside activities; its heart-beat

must not stop for a second, its stomach, its brain, must be

ceaselessly working. Yet this is not enough; the body is

outwardly restless all the while. Its life leads it to an

endless dance of work and play outside; it cannot be satisfied

with the circulations of its internal economy, and only finds the

fulfilment of joy in its outward excursions.

The same with the soul. It cannot live on its own internal

feelings and imaginings. It is ever in need of external objects;

not only to feed its inner consciousness but to apply itself in

action, not only to receive but also to give.

The real truth is, we cannot live if we divide him who is truth

itself into two parts. We must abide in him within as well as

without. In whichever aspect we deny him we deceive ourselves

and incur a loss. _Brahma has not left me, let me not leave

Brahma._ [Footnote: Māham brahma nirākuryyām mā mā brahma

nirākarōt.] If we say that we would realise him in introspection

alone and leave him out of our external activity, that we would

enjoy him by the love in our heart, but not worship him by

outward ministrations; or if we say the opposite, and overweight

ourselves on one side in the journey of our life's quest, we

shall alike totter to our downfall.

In the great western continent we see that the soul of man is

mainly concerned with extending itself outwards; the open field

of the exercise of power is its field. Its partiality is

entirely for the world of extension, and it would leave aside--nay,

hardly believe in--that field of inner consciousness which

is the field of fulfilment. It has gone so far in this that the

perfection of fulfilment seems to exist for it nowhere. Its

science has always talked of the never-ending evolution of the

world. Its metaphysic has now begun to talk of the evolution of

God himself. They will not admit that he _is_; they would have

it that he also is _becoming._

They fail to realise that while the infinite is always greater

than any assignable limit, it is also complete; that on the one

hand Brahma is evolving, on the other he is perfection; that in

the one aspect he is essence, in the other manifestation--both

together at the same time, as is the song and the act of singing.

This is like ignoring the consciousness of the singer and saying

that only the singing is in progress, that there is no song.

Doubtless we are directly aware only of the singing, and never at

any one time of the song as a whole; but do we not all the time

know that the complete song is in the soul of the singer?

It is because of this insistence on the doing and the becoming

that we perceive in the west the intoxication of power. These

men seem to have determined to despoil and grasp everything by

force. They would always obstinately be doing and never be done--they

would not allow to death its natural place in the scheme of

things--they know not the beauty of completion.

In our country the danger comes from the opposite side. Our

partiality is for the internal world. We would cast aside with

contumely the field of power and of extension. We would realise

Brahma in mediation only in his aspect of completeness, we have

determined not to see him in the commerce of the universe in his

aspect of evolution. That is why in our seekers we so often find

the intoxication of the spirit and its consequent degradation.

Their faith would acknowledge no bondage of law, their

imagination soars unrestricted, their conduct disdains to offer

any explanation to reason. Their intellect, in its vain attempts

to see Brahma inseparable from his creation, works itself stone-dry,

and their heart, seeking to confine him within its own

outpourings, swoons in a drunken ecstasy of emotion. They have

not even kept within reach any standard whereby they can measure

the loss of strength and character which manhood sustains by thus

ignoring the bonds of law and the claims of action in the

external universe.

But true spirituality, as taught in our sacred lore, is calmly

balanced in strength, in the correlation of the within and the

without. The truth has its law, it has its joy. On one side of

it is being chanted the _Bhayādasyāgnistapati_ [Footnote: "For

fear of him the fire doth burn," etc], on the other the

_Ānandādhyeva khalvimāni bhūtāni jāyante._ [Footnote: "From Joy

are born all created things," etc.] Freedom is impossible of

attainment without submission to law, for Brahma is in one aspect

bound by his truth, in the other free in his joy.

As for ourselves, it is only when we wholly submit to the bonds

of truth that we fully gain the joy of freedom. And how? As

does the string that is bound to the harp. When the harp is

truly strung, when there is not the slightest laxity in the

strength of the bond, then only does music result; and the string

transcending itself in its melody finds at every chord its true

freedom. It is because it is bound by such hard and fast rules

on the one side that it can find this range of freedom in music

on the other. While the string was not true, it was indeed

merely bound; but a loosening of its bondage would not have been

the way to freedom, which it can only fully achieve by being

bound tighter and tighter till it has attained the true pitch.

The bass and treble strings of our duty are only bonds so long as

we cannot maintain them steadfastly attuned according to the law

of truth; and we cannot call by the name of freedom the loosening

of them into the nothingness of inaction. That is why I would

say that the true striving in the quest of truth, of _dharma_,

consists not in the neglect of action but in the effort to attune

it closer and closer to the eternal harmony. The text of this

striving should be, _Whatever works thou doest, consecrate them

to Brahma._ [Footnote: Yadyat karma prakurvīta tadbrahmani

samarpayet.] That is to say, the soul is to dedicate itself to

Brahma through all its activities. This dedication is the song

of the soul, in this is its freedom. Joy reigns when all work

becomes the path to the union with Brahma; when the soul ceases

to return constantly to its own desires; when in it our self-offering

grows more and more intense. Then there is completion,

then there is freedom, then, in this world, comes the kingdom of

God.

Who is there that, sitting in his corner, would deride this grand

self-expression of humanity in action, this incessant

self-consecration? Who is there that thinks the union of God and man

is to be found in some secluded enjoyment of his own imaginings,

away from the sky-towering temple of the greatness of humanity,

which the whole of mankind, in sunshine and storm, is toiling to

erect through the ages? Who is there that thinks this secluded

communion is the highest form of religion?

O thou distraught wanderer, thou _Sannyasin_, drunk in the wine of

self-intoxication, dost thou not already hear the progress of the

human soul along the highway traversing the wide fields of

humanity--the thunder of its progress in the car of its

achievements, which is destined to overpass the bounds that

prevent its expansion into the universe? The very mountains are

cleft asunder and give way before the march of its banners waving

triumphantly in the heavens; as the mist before the rising sun,

the tangled obscurities of material things vanish at its

irresistible approach. Pain, disease, and disorder are at every

step receding before its onset; the obstructions of ignorance are

being thrust aside; the darkness of blindness is being pierced

through; and behold, the promised land of wealth and health, of

poetry and art, of knowledge and righteousness is gradually being

revealed to view. Do you in your lethargy desire to say that

this car of humanity, which is shaking the very earth with the

triumph of its progress along the mighty vistas of history, has

no charioteer leading it on to its fulfilment? Who is there who

refuses to respond to his call to join in this triumphal progress?

Who so foolish as to run away from the gladsome throng and seek

him in the listlessness of inaction? Who so steeped in untruth as

to dare to call all this untrue--this great world of men, this

civilisation of expanding humanity, this eternal effort of man,

through depths of sorrow, through heights of gladness, through

innumerable impediments within and without, to win victory for his

powers? He who can think of this immensity of achievement as an

immense fraud, can he truly believe in God who is the truth? He

who thinks to reach God by running away from the world, when and

where does he expect to meet him? How far can he fly--can he fly

and fly, till he flies into nothingness itself? No, the coward

who would fly can nowhere find him. We must be brave enough to

be able to say: We are reaching him here in this very spot, now

at this very moment. We must be able to assure ourselves that as

in our actions we are realising ourselves, so in ourselves we are

realising him who is the self of self. We must earn the right to

say so unhesitatingly by clearing away with our own effort all

obstruction, all disorder, all discords from our path of activity;

we must be able to say, "In my work is my joy, and in that joy

does the joy of my joy abide."

Whom does the Upanishad call _The chief among the knowers of

Brahma?_ [Footnote: Brahmavidāmvaristhah.] He is defined as _He

whose joy is in Brahma, whose play is in Brahma, the active one._

[Footnote: Ātmakrīrha ātmaratih kriyāvān.] Joy without the play

of joy is no joy at all--play without activity is no play.

Activity is the play of joy. He whose joy is in Brahma, how can

he live in inaction? For must he not by his activity provide

that in which the joy of Brahma is to take form and manifest

itself? That is why he who knows Brahma, who has his joy in

Brahma, must also have all his activity in Brahma--his eating

and drinking, his earning of livelihood and his beneficence.

Just as the joy of the poet in his poem, of the artist in his

art, of the brave man in the output of his courage, of the wise

man in his discernment of truths, ever seeks expression in their

several activities, so the joy of the knower of Brahma, in the

whole of his everyday work, little and big, in truth, in beauty,

in orderliness and in beneficence, seeks to give expression to

the infinite.

Brahma himself gives expression to his joy in just the same way.

_By his many-sided activity, which radiates in all directions,

does he fulfil the inherent want of his different creatures._

[Footnote: Bahudhā çakti yogāt varņānanekān nihitārtho dadhāti.]

That inherent want is he himself, and so he is in so many ways,

in so many forms, giving himself. He works, for without working

how could he give himself. His joy is ever dedicating itself in

the dedication which is his creation.

In this very thing does our own true meaning lie, in this is our

likeness to our father. We must also give up ourselves in

many-sided variously aimed activity. In the Vedas he is called _the

giver of himself, the giver of strength._ [Footnote: Ātmadā

baladā.] He is not content with giving us himself, but he gives

us strength that we may likewise give ourselves. That is why the

seer of the Upanishad prays to him who is thus fulfilling our

wants, _May he grant us the beneficent mind_ [Footnote: Sa no

buddhya çubhayā samyunaktu.], may he fulfil that uttermost want

of ours by granting us the beneficent mind. That is to say, it

is not enough he should alone work to remove our want, but he

should give us the desire and the strength to work with him in

his activity and in the exercise of the goodness. Then, indeed,

will our union with him alone be accomplished. The beneficent

mind is that which shows us the want (_swārtha_) of another self

to be the inherent want (_nihitārtha_) of our own self; that

which shows that our joy consists in the varied aiming of our

many-sided powers in the work of humanity. When we work under

the guidance of this beneficent mind, then our activity is

regulated, but does not become mechanical; it is action not

goaded on by want, but stimulated by the satisfaction of the

soul. Such activity ceases to be a blind imitation of that of

the multitude, a cowardly following of the dictates of fashion.

Therein we begin to see that _He is in the beginning and in the

end of the universe_ [Footnote: Vichaiti chāntē viçvamādau.],

and likewise see that of our own work is he the fount and the

inspiration, and at the end thereof is he, and therefore that all

our activity is pervaded by peace and good and joy.

The Upanishad says: _Knowledge, power, and action are of his

nature._ [Footnote: Svābhāvikījnāna bala kriyā cha.] It is

because this naturalness has not yet been born in us that we tend

to divide joy from work. Our day of work is not our day of

joy--for that we require a holiday; for, miserable that we are, we

cannot find our holiday in our work. The river finds its holiday

in its onward flow, the fire in its outburst of flame, the scent

of the flower in its permeation of the atmosphere; but in our

everyday work there is no such holiday for us. It is because we

do not let ourselves go, because we do not give ourselves

joyously and entirely up to it, that our work overpowers us.

O giver of thyself! at the vision of thee as joy let our souls

flame up to thee as the fire, flow on to thee as the river,

permeate thy being as the fragrance of the flower. Give us

strength to love, to love fully, our life in its joys and

sorrows, in its gains and losses, in its rise and fall. Let us

have strength enough fully to see and hear thy universe, and to

work with full vigour therein. Let us fully live the life thou

hast given us, let us bravely take and bravely give. This is our

prayer to thee. Let us once for all dislodge from our minds the

feeble fancy that would make out thy joy to be a thing apart from

action, thin, formless, and unsustained. Wherever the peasant

tills the hard earth, there does thy joy gush out in the green of

the corn, wherever man displaces the entangled forest, smooths

the stony ground, and clears for himself a homestead, there does

thy joy enfold it in orderliness and peace.

O worker of the universe! We would pray to thee to let the

irresistible current of thy universal energy come like the

impetuous south wind of spring, let it come rushing over the vast

field of the life of man, let it bring the scent of many flowers,

the murmurings of many woodlands, let it make sweet and vocal the

lifelessness of our dried-up soul-life. Let our newly awakened

powers cry out for unlimited fulfilment in leaf and flower and

fruit.