Work
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- Yoga
Devotee's Question Regarding Work
February 17, 1979
Your question is what you should do in the circumstances of field work where you have no knowledge.
‘Skill in works is yoga' says the Gita. In the best possible sense this means when one acquires the greatest possible skill and does the work with grace, his working becomes yoga pure. To acquire that much skill in any work, the interest, enthusiasm, patience needed are those that are called for by yoga at that level. This is the truism behind the theme of loving service enjoined to the Sudra. The Sudra must read the Veda, worship the highest Godhead and must reach liberation through loving service, says Manu. It is only the outcaste who is prevented from reading the Veda. Sri Aurobindo and The Mother would be very happy if their disciples could qualify as Sudras. How many in our organisation can claim the qualification to be a good Sudra? The industrialists, financiers, agriculturists, the salaried employees of today and all professionals of the modern world, would be the Vaishyas. Are there Brahmins anywhere in the world, leading a pure inner life and bringing blessings on earth? Your question regarding work relates to the skill needed by the Sudra. I repeat that any work done in the best of spirits is accepted by the Divine and the sadhak is liberated from being fettered to that work. That is the use and meaning of consecrated work. Once a certain work is well done, almost at once the sadhak will be moved to a higher type of work. In other words, if one wants to get rid of a work he must try to reach perfection in it as quickly as possible. Moving thus the sadhak reaches higher and higher types of work, higher in terms of its spiritual content, i.e. from physical to vital to mental and finally spiritual work. Pure yoga done in solitude in the inner plane requires a consummate skill of handling forces from subtle and vital planes. Work at earlier stages results at this essence which is the essential SKILL needed for yoga proper.
Just now as you have no skill whatsoever, the moment you take the right attitude, GRACE brings in someone who has all the skill. When you acquire all that skill in fact or in essence you will be moved to another better work.
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Consciousness, knowledge, will, skill
Consciousness is the soul expresses in the mind as the twin aspects of knowledge and will. The stronger the will, the better the personality. Knowledge of the mind taken down to vital and physical for effectivity is skill. Skill is practical knowledge. In the long process of manual labour and vital adventure man acquires the physical, vital skills such as building a house, or killing an enemy tactfully. The essence of this long labour collects as a mental residue, viz. knowledge. Hence knowledge is mental skill. The process of evolution provides for hastening it either by education or concentrated effort, but it does not admit of escaping any step.
Therefore acquiring the right skill of each level and gathering their essence in mind as knowledge is an inevitable process of evolution as well as yoga.
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