While spiritual life can seem to be quite simple and straightforward in the beginning, inevitably, if we are taking it seriously, we will run into periods of confusion and seeming contradiction. We were discussing the seeming contradiction between self-effort and God’s grace and how, if we will work as if it all depended upon us and pray as if it all depended upon God, we will eventually see that there is no contradiction.
Another point of seeming contradiction is illustrated by Swami Sivananda attitude to work. He seems to have been a genius at extracting work from his disciples; they worked very hard. He would have any number of typists typing at the same time in the Diamond Jubilee Hall. Sometimes the Press would work all night to bring out a book. On the other hand, Pujya Swami Chidanandaji tells a story of when Sivanandaji caught him furiously running around from the ashram serving. Gurudev gave him an admonition that Swamiji has remembered till this day. So Gurudev wanted us to find a proper relationship between work and spiritual practice, and, indeed, surely that is the main theme of the Gita. We may want the spiritual life, but that doesn’t mean that we run away from our work or our duty. Whether we are in an ashram or whether we’re in the world, we need to pave our own way. Unfortunately there is something about the spiritual life that can bring out the tamas in us. There is a lazy streak in each one of us, a part of us that would like someone else to take the responsibility, to let someone do the work. To feel that we’re spiritual and that we shouldn’t have to get involved in the dirty work of the world is just one way to express our tamas. It is an unfortunate way of functioning.
We have to find skill in action. We have to find a way of integrating hard work with our spiritual life, because as Lord Krishna says, there is no contradiction between duty and knowledge. Only foolish people think that there is.
Normally, we’re told that the best way to integrate work and practice is to offer our work to God, to consider our work as worship. If we want to go into it a little deeper, we will realise that work cannot contradict our spiritual life because there is only One, not two. If there was two then we could say work is one thing, spiritual life is something else. But when God alone is, God is spiritual life and God is also work. Our work is not something separate from God, rather it is an expression of God.
Therefore, we can work as hard as we want; but it is our bhava that counts. We must see our work as an expression of God. And if we shirk work, we are, in fact, egotistically resisting the expression of God in our lives. And to that extent our spiritual life, instead of being benefited, will suffer.
Swami Atmaswarupananda
