You have to find a solution to this kind of problem, firstly by attending to these commitments - which are very great, hard realities, no doubt - in the manner necessary. You are not going to reject your wife and children, or resign from your job suddenly, in a fit of emotion, which may lead to some trouble afterwards. Do your duty as it is necessary for survival in this body and mind. Destroy not your body. Do not kill yourself in the name of devotion. The Bhagavadgita is before you, a great gospel of integral thinking. Outwardly as well as inwardly, it has brought before you a complete picture of what your duty is. You have a duty towards everything. You cannot say, "I have no duty. I am totally independent. I care not for anything." Nobody can say that. You are breathing the air of the world; you are drinking the water of creation; you are living because of the mercy of people helping you. Thousands of things are permitting you to live in this world. You have a duty towards them. You have a duty towards all of nature which is giving you fresh air to breathe. And you have a duty to the divinities that are keeping your heart pumping always, even when you are fast asleep.

These duties are sometimes described in our ancient scriptures as yajnas, or sacrifices, known as the pancha mahayajnas. You have to do five great sacrifices - which means to say, you have five great duties. No person can say, "I have no duty." This is impossible. You cannot even exist without some commitment in the form of duty. You are educated people. You have studied under a professor, a teacher. From where has this knowledge come to you? You owe a debt, at least mentally, in your prayers, to this great professor, this teacher, who has lovingly taught you the science, the art and the knowledge of your curriculum. You cannot say, "I have left the college. I left the school. I have nothing to do with him." No. You owe him an obligation. "He has made me. My dear schoolmaster, my dear headmaster, my dear professor, principal, has made me, was kind to me. Today if I am thinking properly and I am a little enlightened, it is because of him." You have a duty. You have a duty even to your parents who kept you on their laps and suckled you. They did not allow you, as a little child, to perish. They took care of you, fed you, loved you, educated you, financed you. You have a duty towards them. A humble, servant-like attitude is called upon you in regard to all these people. Your prayer for their welfare is itself a great duty, as you are indebted towards them. You have studied books. Who wrote these books? These authors deserve your prayers. You have read great texts. You have read scientific texts and books on art, religion, philosophy, physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc. They have contributed to your knowledge. These authors also are great rishis, you may say, who have made you what you are.

You have to consider other human beings as your own self. You are not the only human being and others are just dirt. You cannot think like that. They feel as you feel. They are hungry as you are hungry. They are grieving as you are grieving. They fear as you fear. They have needs as you have needs. If you have ample opportunity to serve these people and redress their grievances to the extent possible, it is a yajna that you are performing.

In the Upanishads we are told something more: you have an obligation even to animals and creatures. A little ant that is crawling on the floor of your house is not a wretched creature. It has a soul. It feels. It loves. It has a family. And it grieves, and is afraid. It wants to survive - like you. The ant's feeling in terms of the need for survival is as important as an elephant's feeling. The hunger of the ant is as intense as the hunger of the elephant. Touch not these beings in your house; do not crush them. Do not pound the ants because they are smaller than you. The Upanishads says that if these beings are considered by you as your own self, they will, after you depart from this body, protect you as you protected them. You will wonder how an ant can protect you after your death. The ant exists in the heavens also. Everything in the world has a heavenly existence. There are no ants, no creatures, no animals - they are all reflections of the forms of an original that they have in the high heavens. When you depart from this world, all these things which you have protected and served and shown love to will come there and protect you. If you have eaten somebody, they will eat you when you go to the next world. Whatever you have done to anybody will be done back to you. This is the duty we have spoken of.

If these duties are performed properly, your attachments for the things of the world, your sensations, will diminish gradually because of your feeling of a loving heart and a good nature. Be a good person always. Be a good person! It is necessary to be a good person. Do not become a bad person. In the Manusmriti, the author says, "Say always: Good, good. Do good. Very good." Do not say to anyone, "This is stupid." Nobody likes to hear such words. Though really a thing is stupid, you are not supposed to say so directly in an outburst. You have to approach everything with an educational method - gradually, step by step, in what may be called a Socratic method of approach. Socrates was a great master of dialogue. He knew what was wrong, but he would not say it was wrong. Gradually, step by step, he took the argument through the mind and the mouth of the opponent or the student, and the answer came not from the teacher but from the student himself because of the gradual process of digging the truth from one's own self. So love all, and harm not anyone. It is a great truth that you have to remember. If you harm anyone in a fit of anger or vengeance, you will reap the fruit of it in the next birth.

If you maintain all these moral injunctions and moral mandates in your mind, your sensations, the desire for objects of sense, will slowly come down - gradually, gradually. God will enter your heart. "Empty thyself. I shall fill Thee," the great Master told us. God is telling you, "I shall fill you - but first you should empty yourself." Empty yourself. What does it mean? This ego is asserting its independence, like Lucifer who rebelled against God and said, "I am - as much as You are." This Lucifer is your ego. It must be subdued and emptied of its content of the power of self-affirmation. When you become a vacuous content, the universal forces will rush into you. The pratyahara and dharana techniques of yoga are just these processes of allowing entry into yourself of the forces of the world. The windows of your personality are closed completely by the order of the ego which says, "Keep quiet. Allow none inside. I am the Master. I am the King. I am the Lord of all things! If worse comes to worst, you mind your business. Let the world go to the dogs." This is the voice of the ego, which must be emptied of its content, which is nothing but self-affirmation - an incapacity in yourself to concede anything to other people. You will never concede anything to others. Everything is yours - yourself only. "I am what I am and what I say is final, and you don't talk." This is what the ego says. Why should they not talk? If you can talk, others also can talk. And if you have ideas, they, too, have ideas. Everything is everywhere, even in the psychological realm.

If you are sincere, honest in your heart, and if you want God truly, He shall come. Undivided devotion is called for - ananya cintana. Read this yoga of the Bhagavadgita: ananyas cintayanto mam ye janah paryupasate tesham nityabhiyuktanam yoga-ksemam vahamya aham (B.G. 9.22). The whole of the Bhagavadgita gospel is clinched in this one single verse which hangs beautifully like a pendant in the garland of the verses of the Bhagavadgita. Trust God. He shall trust you and give you what you need. And the way of trusting is described in this verse: "For those who worship Me alone, thinking of no other, for those ever-united, I secure what is not already possessed and preserve what they already possess." Something other than God should not enter your mind. Another idea arises because you feel that God is not sufficient for your purpose. He is all-in-all, but there is another thing also which is good enough. That is the honey that the senses are licking in the barbed wire of the objects of sense.

Every day, find time in your house to be alone to yourself for one hour. Sit alone to yourself without any comrade or friend near you - alone to yourself, alone to yourself, alone to yourself. "Am I alone in this world, or have I got anything in this world?" Detachment - vairagya, non-attachment to things - will spontaneously arise in your mind if you think of the way in which you were born into this world. Helplessly you came; in abject dependence you were born. How did you become a king now, suddenly, when you have brought nothing with you? Are you going to leave this world one day? What are you going to take with you? "I have brought nothing and I am going to take nothing. How is it in the middle I appear to be possessed of so much wealth?" An illusion has been cast before you. Alone. Alone. Alone. You are just what you were when you came to this world - a poor, humble being, entirely at the disposal of the cosmic forces and God Almighty. Never forget that, essentially, you are not so independent as you are thinking. You live by the mercy of the world outside you, which also operates due to the centre of the cosmos - intelligently operating, without which no leaf in the tree can move. Finally when everything goes, what do you look like? Think about it. "I have no friends. I have no parents. They have left me. I have no family; that has gone. I lost my job. I have no penny with me, and nobody wants to look at me." What do you feel at that time? That is your true nature. If at that time you are a great man, you are really a great man. When everything goes, if you can feel everything has come to you, then God enters into you and you will be blessed.

I repeat once again: keep company of good people. Even when you are out of the classroom, when you are a little free, either be alone to yourself contemplating in the manner necessary, or keep company with a person who will help you in the entertainment of spiritual ideas - at least, who will not disturb you, or harm you, or make your mind go astray. Keep good company. If good company is not possible under certain conditions of life, be alone to yourself. Thus protected in many ways, guarding yourself in various forms of self-discipline, trusting in God, everything is possible in this world.

But one thing is not possible: trust in God. Firstly, it is because of the distance that seems to be there between yourself and Him; secondly, it is due to the suspicion of whether He is really going answer your prayer; thirdly, it is doubt whether you are meant for it or you are not a suitable candidate for this great adventure. Remove these doubts. Miracles will take place. You need not go to things; things will come to you. I told you a story the other day of when God runs after the devotee instead of your running after God. Can you pull God into yourself and make Him love you - let alone your intention, your being intent on loving God yourself? It is a great thing to pull God into yourself. This is a wondrous technique. If this could be successful, you do not know what you will be. Blessedness will be yours. God trusts you because you are the replica of God himself. He wants you more than you want Him. Do you know that? He wants you more than you want Him! It is said in the Bhakti Shastras that if you take one step in the direction of God, He will come running - taking a hundred steps. Your response is from one side only, unilaterally from one individual centre, but His response is from all sides. Like a flood, like an oceanic wave, He will come and give you so much that you will have no place to keep it.

There is a Marathi saying that if with infinite hands God starts giving you, into your two little hands, how much will you keep in your pocket? Infinite mercy God has upon you. He has created you. You should really believe that you have come from him. You are a spark of divinity; God is the soul within you. The soul that you are is God speaking. The conscience, the soul, the essential root of your being is God Himself planted in you. He speaks from within, and also speaks from without, and speaks from everywhere. When God speaks, he speaks even from a leaf of a tree. You will be a blessed person.

This is what Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj has told us for days and days, and months and months, and years and years, by his personal example of living, by his great writings and his great meditations for the welfare of the whole of humanity.