Secret of Right Action

No action is seen to fully bring to us the intended result, because it is bound up with several factors not under the control of the actor. It is meaningless to think that a divine way of living is not the usual way and that it is some mystic segregation and introversion not normally connected with life. This misconception arises on account of a misunderstanding of what spiritual life is and the aim of life should mean to us. When every type of action is visualised as a process of the universal activity of God, or the Absolute, individual and personal agency drops out from the scene altogether. Behold the soul-stirring dictum of the Bhagavad-Gita, that the wise one should always maintain the feeling that the agent, the process and the result of action are only modes in the universal design. Here becomes explicit the truth of the saying that we are to regard ourselves as only instruments and not the real doers of any action. This is Karma-Yoga, that master technique of converting every work into duty and a veritable self-sacrifice, self-dedication and self-consecration in the beatitude of God. And Karma-Yoga is said to be based on Buddhi-Yoga or the art of right understanding, the understanding that man is ever in a state of attunement with God. Even the springs of instinctive action are found ultimately to be rooted in a distortion of the desire for self-possession in the completeness of the Divine. Only, instinctive action suffers and labours under the ignorance that the body and the mind have an existence isolated from other bodies and minds. This misery is Samsara, the aberration of the soul from itself, and the searching for itself in the not-self, the phantom and the imagination.

The reason why we think and feel as we do or act as we are accustomed to, lies in the why and how of individual existence itself. The body and the mind receive a universal sustenance, they are not only maintained but even constituted by an ocean of force which appears to manifest itself in spatio-temporal configurations. Our central urge is to overcome spatial limitations and temporal restrictions in an experience which is self-dependent, self-determined and perfect in itself. This state is referred to in the Upanishad as the Plenum of Felicity, where one sees nothing else, hears nothing else and understands nothing else. It is also said that should be considered transient and paltry in which one sees something else, hears something else and understands something else than the Self. Under these circumstances it would be mere vanity and a futile attempt to try to arrogate reality to any personality or individuality. This self-arrogation is termed selfishness, and is a folly.

In this mysterious cosmos, which is more like a reverberating chamber where every little sound is loudly heard everywhere and in which there can be no such thing as privacy, every thought, however feeble it may be, announces itself spontaneously and gets recorded in the subtle realms, never gets destroyed, and is repaid in a befitting manner. Every thought is a tiny ripple, a wave in the sea of existence, and has a claim to exist and be evaluated as any other thing existent or conceivable. Everyone of us, therefore, has at his background infinite support, infinite help, infinite sympathy, if only we would be careful enough to evoke it, by being aware of it. The unity of religions, the concord of philosophical thought, the meaning of universal brotherhood and the necessity for universal love in life is here explained, and we are now able to recognise it not as a fancy, a dogma, a creed or a tenet, but as the one law of life, the rule of individual and social survival, the principle and significance of our very existence.

Every bit of thing in the world, from the lowest to the highest, every little thought, feeling and action has to be viewed, judged and evaluated in the light of the unitary law that we have thus discovered as relentlessly operating within us and also outside us. True morality is the determination of the lower by the higher, the envisaging of every step that we take as a necessary precondition of the next step. Life in the world is a means which, when it evolves itself completely, takes the shape of the end, and the end is already present at every stage of the developing process of the means. The world is thus teleological and not mechanical. We, individuals inhabiting this universe, are held together not as pebbles or stones forming a heap but as organic parts which are inseparably related to a living whole that cannot be cut or divided without being mutilated and destroyed. Our social relations, which have a deeper meaning than is seen on the surface, should apprise us of the existence of a universal Self, and of our duty to it in all the strata of life. In our perceptions we perceive it, in our feelings we feel it, and in our actions we stumble upon it every moment, though we, at the present state of ours, are not endowed with an adequate knowledge of it. Human psychology is a study of the mental behaviour of the human individuality, and this individuality is, as we have observed above, a conglomeration of certain involuntary urges that seek satisfaction in things they know not. The only saving factor is the higher reason which sometimes points to a higher life above them. We cannot be profound psychologists possessed of an understanding of the hidden implications of our behavior unless we have patience enough to listen attentively to and intelligently sympathise with the clamouring cries that are heard from within ourselves. We cannot cure our illness without knowing why we have fallen ill, and psychology as it is understood in the present Western sense of the term has not the requisite apparatus to fathom the depths of the human personality, it being confined to observed phenomena that are presented to the intellect which often merely plays second fiddle to the ignorant senses. Reason should also be able to know its limitations, and also the reason why it should be so limited. Our present-day psychological analyses cannot be the last word in the field of inner research, for we have other means of knowledge than mere sensation. The mind, when it is disturbed by the revolting noise of the senses, cannot properly reflect in itself the true state of affairs. When the five senses of knowledge stand fixed together with the understanding and the faculty of thinking, and the intellect does not oscillate, that, they say, is the supreme state, declares the Kathopanishad. That, again, is called the condition of Yoga wherein the consciousness does not get objectified through the avenues of the senses, and the mind rests in itself. Yoga is at-one-ment with the Infinite. No science of the mind or study of the inner behaviour of the human being can be exact and meaningful when this mighty truth is lost sight of, and the endeavours at right knowledge are confined to the belief that what we see with our eyes is the all. Far from this is the goal we are seeking, and we require an altogether different education to be able to appreciate this point of view.