Therefore, enjoy, be happy. The Upanishad does not say, "Be sorry." Bhunjithah - "Enjoy." Does God enjoy anything? Or is He starving? You will be wondering if the question itself has any meaning. God does not starve. He does not require any diet and, therefore, there is no question of starving. Why does He not require any diet? He is all things and so the diet is also Himself only. Therefore, where is the question of His grabbing it? If you consider God as the Ultimate Reality and all others as lesser realities, or perhaps not realities at all, your welfare consists in your approximation to God's Existence in some way, to some extent, in some measure, and not in anything else.

So, enjoy everything without possessing anything. Can you enjoy a flower without plucking it from the garden? Here is the whole point. Why do you pluck things and want to say "it is mine"? Let it be there; let the flower be there, growing luxuriantly on the plant. Let it be happy as it is and ought to be, in its own location. Why do you want to cut it off and say it is yours? Would you like someone to say that you are his? Would you like to be a property of somebody? "You are my property from tomorrow." Would you like to be told this? You will say, "What kind of thing is this? How is it possible? I am an independent person. I am what I am and how can you possess me?" Nobody likes to be even a servant or a slave. It is a very unpleasant thing to become a servant, a slave, an underdog of somebody; and to say, "You are my property," is still worse. How would you expect anyone else to tolerate this statement of yours? Even the land would not like to be told, "You are mine from tomorrow onwards." This is not a joke; in fact, there is a reference to this in the Bhumi Gita of the Bhagavata, where the earth says: "Oh, so many kings have come and wanted to possess me! Nobody really possessed me. They went and I am here as I am. Nobody possessed me! So many kings walked over me and said, 'Oh, you are mine', but nobody took me. They went, and I remained." The Bhumi Gita is very interesting. You will find this in the Vishnu Purana and also in the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana.

Therefore, do not be under the impression that you require possessions in order to be happy. Being enhanced is the state of happiness. Your existence has to increase in its dimension; you have to become larger, not by adding some accretions from outside in the form of property, which can never become yours, but by your 'being' itself becoming larger. You have to learn this technique of how your being can become large.

If you can conceive of God, you can conceive of this large Being also. God is the largest expanse of Being, and is not 'becoming', or an object. Pure Sat, Existence as such, Being qua Being is Ishvara, God. And if you know He is the happiest pinnacle of existence without having any kind of association or possession from outside, you can also be happy in the same way, provided you are able to adjust your being in some measure at least, to the extent possible, with that Great Being of the Cosmos.

Hence, the first mantra of the Isavasya Upanishad says, isavasyam idam sarvam yat kim ca jagatyam jagat: "All this that you perceive, see, or contact through the sense organs is enveloped by God." I have tried to explain the meaning of this word 'enveloped', which is very intriguing, and deep connotation and significance are involved in it. "Knowing this, be happy." Merely by knowing this, you will be happy. Are you not happy merely by knowing that you are alive? Will you be happy by knowing that you will not be alive? The greatest happiness is in the feeling that you are hale and hearty. And if you are not hale and hearty, any kind of possession is not going to make you happy. Even in ordinary daily life you will realise that your being itself is a source of happiness. "I am perfectly secure, hale and hearty; it makes me happy. However, if I am not that, then put all gold and silver on my head. Will I be happy? Crush me with the weight of a load of silver; what is the good if I am not hale and hearty?" Happiness is the condition of Being, which is you. Happiness is not some consequence or result that follows from accretion of objects into your so-called personality. This mantra is very difficult to understand. One great thinker said that if all the scriptures in the world were destroyed and if only this mantra is available to us, we need not learn anything else afterwards. Let this one mantra remain and all the scriptures be destroyed. This one verse is sufficient to save us: Isavasyam idam sarvam yat kim ca jagatyam jagat, tena tyaktena bhunjitha, ma gridhah kasyasvid dhanam (Isa 1).

Do not be greedy. Do not be possessive. Do not say "I want, I want, I want." You require nothing, finally. Even the richest people do not sleep on ten kilometres of land. They require six feet on which to sleep. Do you think a millionaire requires a longer, lengthier bed, several furlongs long, to sleep on? Will a rich person eat two quintals of food because he is rich? He will perhaps eat less than what you eat. These are confusions in the mind. Wealth and possession - accretion of objects, imagination that one has everything in this world - "I am the ruler of this earth" - these are rank illusions in the mind, and you will know this when the time comes. When everything goes, you will realise that you made a mistake in thinking that you had everything. You never brought anything when you came to this world. Are you trying to possess things which you did not bring? How did you earn this property of the world when you did not bring it with you when you came? Actually, if you have earned this property, you could take it when you go. Why do you not take it with you? You have so much wealth that you have earned through your profession; take it with you when you go. Can you? If you cannot bring anything and if you cannot take anything either, how is it possible for you to possess anything in the middle? The logic is: that which is not in the beginning, and not in the end, is also not in the middle. It is a total delusion, which is hard to understand and difficult to appreciate. A bitter pill is this knowledge. But this is the truth, and this is what the first mantra of the Isavasya Upanishad says.

I have told you there are four instructions in this Upanishad. The first one is the fundamental, philosophical doctrine - the basic philosophy, not merely of this country, but of humanity as a whole. It is possible to thrust all religions into this one single verse of the Upanishad, i.e., the first verse - isavasyam idam sarvam…, as one can thrust things into a hold-all. All philosophies, all religions, all doctrines go into the hold-all of this one verse of the Isavasya Upanishad. Well, that is wonderful. This is the metaphysical foundation of philosophy and the highest peak of human thought.

The second mantra says: "Everyone has to do something." Knowledge of the Supreme Being does not mean idleness of personality. This is something even more difficult to understand than the earlier mantra. You will say: "If God alone is, why should I do anything? I will keep quiet." Here, in saying so, you make the mistake of having a wrong notion about yourself. "I will keep quiet." Which 'I' is keeping quiet? Is the body 'I' keeping quiet? Is the mind 'I' keeping quiet? What is meant when you say: "I shall keep quiet because God does all things and He is all things"? It is a consciousness of a peculiar condition of your personality that makes this statement. Here you have made a blunder. Your statement that you need not do anything implies your acceptance of your being an individual nevertheless, a body-mind complex, in spite of your theoretical and intellectual acceptance of the omnipresence of God. This is something very interesting, which may also look very difficult; but if you remember this, you may not have to learn anything else afterwards.

It is a wrong notion of yourself that makes you conclude that one can keep quiet without doing anything because God does all things. Then how do you come into existence as an idle person, if God exists everywhere and God is all things? Do you believe that you have also negated yourself, and your existence is abolished? If you really feel that God exists and He is all things, it is wonderful. If you are convinced that you do not exist and you have melted into the Cosmic Being, why should you feel the need to say that you need not do anything? In making this statement, you have made a mistake due to a wrong concept of your individuality that has crept in, even as you appear to be making a correct statement from your point of view.

The concept of the Absolute is the subject of the first mantra. The concept of individuality is the subject of the second mantra. What are you, in the light of this conclusion that God pervades all things and God is everything? If you are cautious enough in exercising your thoughts in this context, you will be compelled to conclude - and feel, too - that you cannot exist at all. You do not any more exist. It has gone. Your so-called 'me' has gone into the Universal 'I'. Such a feeling, intellectually, is appreciable and conceivable. Practically, you cannot accommodate yourself to this consciousness because you can feel this hard body when you touch it with your fingers. So the Upanishad says: "Do not be in a hurry. Go slowly. Do such things as will gradually widen the concept of your personality, or individuality, and make it commensurate with the supreme universal personality of God Himself. This is done by the duty which is to be performed."

Yesterday I made a brief reference to the concept of duty. Duty is the work that you do in participation with a larger whole - an organisation, a family circumstance, a national setup or even the universe itself. Actually, work in a spiritual sense is not something that is done in some way, for some reason. "I am doing something" - that is not the point. The work that you do as a duty becomes valuable - and actually can be called duty and as work that has that a value in it - only if it is a sacrifice on your part by way of a participation in the welfare of a larger whole to which you belong. If you are in a family with five people, ten people, each member has to contribute something by way of a sacrifice of his personal interest for the welfare of a larger organisation, which is the group of individuals called the family. If each one sticks to his own guns, there will be no family. It will disintegrate. A family is a consciousness; it is not a bundle of people. It is an awareness of oneself belonging to a total whole, which is what is called a family. It is a conceptual entity, not a physical body. So is an organisation; so is a nation. You cannot see the nation with your eyes. You see only mountains, rivers, trees and the ground. Nation is a concept, a consciousness of a totality of values to which you belong as a citizen thereof. When you say, "I am a citizen of this country," what is it that you actually mean? You are a citizen; it means you are a person, an entity that belongs to a total whole, which is not visible to the eyes. You have to participate in the welfare of the whole.

There are various wholes. The body itself is a whole. You have to take care of it, not torture it and kill it. The body also is an organism; it is an organisation. The family is an organism, an organisation. So is a state, a nation, an international setup, the United Nations organisation or the whole universe of creation. In each one, in each level, you have to be a participant and not be in opposition. You should not belong to the opposite party always. You should be a participant in the welfare of the whole to which you belong. This is the duty that you have to perform. Do work as long as you are alive in this world. There is no retirement from work of this kind. There may be retirement from office work, from industrial work and so on, but there is no retirement from duty because you retire from duty only when you cease to exist as an individual. As long as personality persists, duty continues. You may live for a hundred years, if possible - satam jivema. What will you do for one hundred years? You will be doing duty. What is the duty?

A person who has not understood the meaning of the first mantra will not understand the meaning of the second mantra either. They go together as associates, like the right hand and the left hand. You will not be able to understand what duty is, in the sense of this self-sacrifice for the welfare of the whole, unless you know what the whole is. I gave you a traditional list of several wholes. The ultimate whole is the Absolute Being. All these lesser wholes are determined by the Supreme Whole. In every case you ought to be a participant. You have to participate in every way necessary for the welfare of your bodily and mental health. You should not destroy your mind and body. So also it is with your family, and so also with all the things that I have enumerated just now.

Therefore, you can be a very happy person by belonging to something, not by possessing something. The moment you belong to something, that something to which you belong will take care of you. Hence, privileges follow automatically from duties. However, these days people cry only for rights, and want no duties. "I have no work; I will sit outside. Bring my salary." This is against the law of the cosmos. You cannot expect remuneration without doing anything. If you understand what I said, you will be very happy.