Work

If you want to be a true doer of divine works, your first aim must be to be totally free from all desire and self-regarding ego. All stress of egoistic choice, all hankering after personal profit, all stipulation of self-regarding desire must be extirpated from the nature. There must be no demand for fruit and no seeking for reward; the only fruit for you is the pleasure of the Divine Mother and the fulfilment of her work, your only reward a constant progression in divine consciousness and calm and strength and bliss.

 

To keep up work helps to keep the balance between the internal experience and the external development; otherwise one-sidedness and want of measure and balance may develop. Moreover, it is necessary to keep the sadhana of work for the Divine, because in the end that enables the sadhak to bring out the inner progress into the external nature and life and helps the integrality of the sadhana.

 

 

 

To go entirely inside in order to have experiences and to neglect the work, the external consciousness is to be unbalanced; so also to throw oneself outward and live in the external being alone is to be unbalanced. One must have the same consciousness in inner experience and outward action and make both full of the Mother.

 

There should be not only a general attitude, but each work should be offered to the Mother so as to keep the attitude a living one all the time.

 

The only work that spiritually purifies is that which is done without personal motives, without desire for fame or public recognition or worldly greatness, without insistence on one’s own mental motives or vital lusts and demands or physical preferences, without vanity or crude self-assertion or claim for position or prestige, done for the sake of the Divine alone and at the command of the Divine.

 

Those who do work for the Mother in all sincerity, are prepared by the work itself for the right consciousness even if they do not sit down for meditation or follow any particular practice of Yoga. It is not necessary to tell you how to meditate; whatever is needful will come of itself if in your work and at all times you are sincere and keep yourself open to the Mother.

 

There is no stage of the sadhana in which works are impossible. A complete cessation of work and entire withdrawal into oneself is seldom advisable; it may encourage a too one-sided an visionary condition in which one lives in a sort of mid world of purely subjective experiences without a firm hold on either external reality or on the highest Reality and without the right use of the subjective experience to create a firm link and then a unification between the highest Reality and the external realisation in life.

 

Work for the Mother done with the right concentration on her is as much a sadhana as meditation and inner experiences.

 

To do both meditation and work and dedicate both to the Mother is the best thing.

 

The Mother does not think that it is good to give up all work and only read and meditate. Work is part of the Yoga and it gives the best opportunity for calling down the Presence, the Light and the Power into the vital and its activities; it increases also the field and the opportunity of surrender.

 

It is not enough to remember that the work is the Mother’s — and the results also. You must learn to feel the Mother’s force behind you and to open to the inspiration and the guidance. Always to remember by an effort of the mind is too difficult; but if you get into the consciousness in which you feel always the Mother’s force in you or supporting you, that is the true thing.

 

Yoga through work is the easiest and most effective way to enter into the stream of this sadhana.

 

Work is not only for work’s sake, but as field of sadhana for getting rid of the lower personality and its reactions and acquiring a full surrender to the Divine. As for the work itself, it must be done according to the organisation arranged or sanctioned by the Mother. You must always remember that it is her work and not personally yours.

 

To leave your work is not a solution — it is through work that one can detect and progressively get rid of the feelings and movements that are contrary to the Yogic ideal — those of the ego. The test is to do the work given by the Mother without abhiman or insistence or personal choice or prestige,— not getting hurt by anything that touches the pride, or personal preference.

 

It is a great and high ideal that is put before the sadhak through work and it is not possible to realise it suddenly, but to grow steadily into it is possible, if one keeps the aim always before one — to be a selfless and perfectly tempered instrument for the work of the Divine Mother.

 

In work it is to do what is best for the work, without regard to one’s own prestige or convenience, not to regard the work as one’s own but as the Mother’s, to do it according to rule, discipline, impersonal arrangement, even if conditions are not favourable to do the best according to the conditions, etc., etc.

 

The greater the difficulties that rise in the work the more one can profit by them in deepening the equality, if one takes it in the right spirit. You must also keep yourself open to receive the help towards that, for the help will always be coming from the Mother for the change of the nature.

 

If, however, the mind and the vital get the habit of opening to the Mother’s Force, they are then supported by the Force and may even be fully filled with it — the Force does the work and the body feels no strain or fatigue before or after. But even then, unless the body itself is open and can absorb and keep the Force, sufficient rest in between the work is absolutely necessary. Otherwise, although the body may go on for a very long time, yet in the end there can be a danger of a collapse.

 

A complete freedom from fatigue is possible, but that comes only when there is a complete transformation of the law of the body by the full descent of a supramental Force into the earth-nature.

 

To work in the calm ever-widening consciousness is at once a sadhana and a siddhi.

 

The including of the outer consciousness in the transformation is of supreme importance in this Yoga — meditation cannot do it. Meditation can deal only with the inner being. So work is of primary importance — only it must be done with the right attitude and in the right consciousness, then it is as fruitful as any meditation can be.

 

The ignorance underlying this attitude is in the assumption that one must necessarily do only work or only meditation. Work by itself is only a preparation, so is meditation by itself, but work done in the increasing Yogic consciousness is a means of realisation as much as-meditation is.

 

I have always said that work done as sadhana — done,, that is to say, as an outflow of energy from the Divine and offered to the Divine or work done for the sake of the Divine or work done in a spirit of devotion is a powerful means of sadhana and that such work is especially necessary in this Yoga. By work and bhakti one can develop a consciousness in which eventually a natural meditation and realisation becomes possible.

 

All work done for the Divine is equally divine, manual labour done for the Divine is- more divine than mental culture done for one’s own development, fame or mental satisfaction. The idea of giving up physical work for mental self-development is a creation of the mental ego.

 

To be free from all egoistic motive, careful of truth in speech and action, void of self-will and self-assertion, watchful in all things, is the condition for being a flawless servant.

 

The work here is not intended for showing one’s capacity or having a position or as a means of physical nearness to the Mother, but as a field and an opportunity for the Karmayoga — part of the integral Yoga, for learning to work in the true Yogic way, dedication through service, practical selflessness, obedience, scrupulousness, discipline, setting the Divine and the Divine’s work first and oneself last, harmony, patience, forbearance, etc. When the workers learn these things and cease to be ego-centric, as most of you are, then will come the time for work in which capacity can really be shown, although even then the showing of capacity will be an incident and can never be the main consideration or the object of divine work.

 

If too much work is done the quality of the work deteriorates in spite of the zest of the worker.

 

Mother does not disapprove of your writing a book — what she does not like is your being so lost in it that you can do nothing else. You must be master of what you do and not possessed by it.

 

You must do the work as an offering to the Divine and take it as part of your sadhana. In that spirit the nature of the work is of little importance and you can do any work without losing the contact with the inner presence.

 

All work done for the Divine, from poetry and art and music to carpentry or baking or sweeping a room, should be made perfect even in its smallest external detail as well as in the spirit in which it is done; for only then is it an altogether fit offering.

 

The Mother:

To work for the Divine is to pray with the body.

 

Work done in the true spirit is meditation.

 

A good material work not exceeding normal capacities is most useful for keeping a good physical and moral poise.

 

Here, for each work given, the full strength and Grace are always given at the same time to do the work as it has to be done. If you do not feel the strength and the Grace it proves that there is some mistake in your attitude. The faith is lacking or you have fallen back on old tracks and old creeds and thus you lose all receptivity.

 

You will become more and more perfect in your work as the consciousness grows, increases, widens and is enlarged.

 

When in your work you find something giving trouble outside, look within and you will find in yourself the corresponding difficulty. Change yourself and the circumstances will change.

 

It is not so easy to do work. Don’t think that somehow finishing the outward form of the work is doing the work in the true sense. It is much more difficult to work than to do «sadhana» as it is ordinarily understood. In meditation your consciousness goes higher and remains there in conditions of light and peace. In true work you have to do that also and much more. You have to do all that a Yogi does, you have to [reach the highest heights and bring down those conditions of consciousness, light and peace and manifest them in your everyday jobs. For you no work is insignificant or trivial.

 

There must be order and harmony in your work. Mahasaraswati is not at all satisfied with your work if even the slightest disharmony, disorder or confusion are found in it. Even what is apparently the most insignificant thing must be done with perfect perfection, with a sense of cleanliness, beauty, harmony and order. For example even when you sweep a room you must try to make it as clean as a first class operation theatre.

 

Unless you work hard you do not get energy; because in that case you do not need it and don’t deserve it. You get energy only when you make use of it.