Sunday Service Reading #19

From Rays of the One Light
The Secret of Right Action
(to long readings) (link to longest reading)

Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within. The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.

One of the most famous stories in the Gospels is that of Martha and Mary. Jesus, visiting the home of Martha, was teaching while her sister Mary sat at his feet absorbing his divine love and wisdom. Martha, meanwhile, busied herself with serving her guests, and was upset with Mary for not helping her.

“Lord,”she cried,“doesn't it matter to you that my sister has left me to do all this serving alone? Please ask her to help me.”
“Martha, Martha,” Jesus answered,“thou art careful and troubled about many things.”
“But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

This story is classic, for Martha's complaint is very understandable, and not, on the surface of it, spiritually wrong. Jesus might well have told Mary to get up and help her. Nor do we really know that he didn't, considerate as he always was of others' needs. But the teaching here doesn't concern the obvious dilemma of devotees: to work for God, or to spend all one's time in prayer. It concerns, rather, the attitude of the mind.

Jesus didn't tell Martha: “Martha, you are doing too much.” He told her, rather, “You are letting your work affect your inner peace.” That was the contrast: not work vs. contemplation, but restless preoccupation vs. peaceful absorption under all circumstances.

As it says in the Bhagavad Gita, the second Chapter:

Actions performed under the influence of desire are greatly inferior to those which are guided by wisdom. Happiness eludes people when they act from self-interest. Seek shelter, therefore, in the equanimity of wisdom.

Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Jytoish's Service on this Subject from 5-8-05

Thoughts from Jyotish's talk:

1 - Martha's first mistake was she decided that restless activity was more valuable than comtemplation of the divine.
2 - Her second mistake was to get upset about it: was she "joyful" in the food preperation she was doing? Her mistake was to think that "what we do is more important than the attitude in which we do it."

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Peter Van Houten's Service on this Subject from 5-11-08

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Catherine Van Houten's Service on this Subject from 5-13-07

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Asha's Service on this Subject from 5-13-07

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Lorne's Service on this Subject from 5-16-10

Long Readings from the 3 Volume Set:
Rays of the Same Light

#19 Disinterested Action: The Way to Inner Peace
(#18 in the original book)

This reading is from the Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 10, Verses 38-42:

"Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.

"And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word.

"But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me.

"And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things:

"But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her."

Commentary

This story is commonly, but mistakenly, taken as contrasting two spiritual modes of living: that of outward service with that of inward contemplation and prayer. Most Christians classify themselves as Marthas, often with the rueful excuse, "Well, we Marthas of this world are needed, too."

Jesus, however, wasn't scolding Martha for the useful service she was rendering. Throughout his earthly mission, he praised both types of devotees: the busy and the meditative. In this story he clearly wasn't drawing a comparison between two valid paths to God. He wasn't saying, for example, "What you are doing, Martha, is good, but Mary's silent absorption is even better." In telling Martha, "Mary's is the only right way," he was quite simply rebuking her for her restlessness, her work-centeredness.

Martha's error was one common to devotees everywhere: In her busy-ness, even though she was working for God, she lost sight of the true purpose of spiritual service.

The world had become for her all the dishes steaming on the stove, the endless dicing and splicing and sifting and spicing she had to do to prepare the best possible meal for her honored guests. Had her attitude been spiritually right, her thoughts would have been centered in God even in the heat of this activity. She would not have surrendered her calmness and inner joy to the pressures of work. Most important, she would not have lost inward touch with Jesus' consciousness and vibrations.

This is not to say that Martha failed to receive any rewards for her hard work. She simply missed the highest spiritual reward: divine realization. Her sin, in other words, was one of omission; it was not one of commission. She saw her relationship to Jesus as that to a righteous man, not to a prophet.

Jesus, on another occasion, explained the importance of drawing the highest blessings from a true master. "He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet," he said, "shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward." (Matthew 10:41)

A prophet lives in God. A righteous man, on the other hand, is one whose consciousness is still centered in the ego. He performs good deeds, but more because he believes in goodness than because he knows God. He may not even believe in God.

To receive a prophet's reward means to attract the best that the prophet has to offer: God-consciousness itself. To receive a righteous man's reward, on the other hand, means to acquire good karma — a happy and fortunate life, in other words, here on earth and in heaven, but bondage still to the ego and to the consciousness of separation from God. "Chains," as it has been wisely said, "though of gold, still bind."

To receive a prophet "in the name of a prophet" means to attune oneself to him in the spirit. Service to him should be seen primarily as a means of deepening one's attunement with God's grace, as it flows through master to disciple.

The same flow continues onward through the disciples. Jesus, after speaking of receiving a prophet's reward, said, "Believe me, anyone who gives even a drink of water to one of these little ones, only in the name of a disciple [that is, because he is my disciple], will by no means lose his reward." (Matthew 10:42)

Martha, in this story, exemplifies those superficial devotees who, even while serving God, forget the true purpose for their service. Jesus would surely have praised Martha, and might even have sent Mary to help her, had he found her centered in God instead of in her work, and had he seen her working with non-attachment and inner joy. What he wanted of her was not that she stop working, but only that she not lose touch with God's love in her heart.

Service performed with a devotional attitude is ever purifying. It is a means of opening the heart to God's love. It is also one of the most important means of developing that sensitive awareness by which His love can be channeled to all.

Jesus' first teaching in this passage concerns the right, serviceful attitude that should be assumed by every devotee. His second teaching concerns the importance of inner communion, the example of which was set by Mary. Mary's comportment here merits separate treatment. It will be discussed in next week's commentary.

Meanwhile, let us remember that to live for God means above all to live with Him — in the thought of Him, and in the awareness of His presence, of His eternal love within.

Thus, through the Holy Bible, God has spoken to mankind.

This passage of the Bhagavad Gita is from the 2nd Chapter, the 49th Stanza:

"Actions performed under the influence of desire are greatly inferior to those which are guided by wisdom. Happiness eludes people when they act from motives of self-interest. Seek shelter, therefore, in the equanimity of wisdom."

Commentary

The Bhagavad Gita is emphasizing the eternal need for offering the "I" principle into the expansion of soul-consciousness.

Restless activity is never wholly free of ego-motivation, even when it is offered devotedly to God. For restlessness is allied to ego-consciousness. Without equanimity, the best that even the sincere devotee can do is affirm soul-consciousness: He cannot realize it.

The Gita's warning is not against right, wisdom-guided action. Such action rather, directed without selfish motive, is one of the best ways to achieve divine freedom.

Actions that are motivated by self-interest lead to mental and emotional bondage. Attachment produces anxiety in the mind. When such action results in failure, its psychological fruits are disappointment, discouragement, and other negative mental states. And when it results in success, it brings on an almost equally soul-disturbing fever of excitement, which the mind merely confuses with happiness.

Desireless actions alone bring inner peace.

While one should renounce selfish motives, the devotee should work ever enthusiastically — not for himself, but for the welfare of all, and, above all, to please God.

The conclusive argument against desire-motivated action is that it defeats its own purpose. People who act from selfish motives hope thereby to attain happiness, but in this hope they are forever disappointed. Life's fulfillments alternate with equal measures of disappointment. Even in those fleeting moments, moreover, when human happiness is realized, it cannot be compared with soul-joy.

How pale a response is human happiness to the deeper expectations of the soul! People even define their happiness in negative terms! Asked, "How are you?" they reply, "Not bad."

The connection people normally see between desire-fulfillment and happiness is a simple case of mistaken identity. All they really do is project expectations of happiness onto the world around them. The seat of happiness, however, is never outside oneself. It lies within. Pleasure itself is experienced in the brain, not in the body. Mankind lives in a world not of things, but of consciousness.

The Bhagavad Gita doesn't ask us to renounce self-interest on faith alone. We should make an impartial study of life. From any such investigation it is easy to see that self-interest can only obstruct true happiness.

Observe little children: How bursting they are with energy and enthusiasm! Study them as they grow older and begin spinning life-ambitions for themselves. "Someday," they say, "I will be wealthy. I will find a loving wife or husband, raise a happy family, build a beautiful home, attain fame, become influential!" See them at the age of, say, seventeen. How the future stretches out before their mental gaze, verdant with hope!

Then see them at twenty-five. Already their eyes reveal a certain tension; their voices, a degree of hardness. Life is turning out to be rather more of a struggle than they first bargained for. But they still manage to cling trustingly to their dreams.

See them again at forty: irascible, tired, perhaps already discouraged.

And see them at last after the race has been run: at sixty — seventy — seventy-five. Most of them are a spent force. How little they have to show for their lives of arduous labor!

A survey was once made of people in their late thirties and forties. One of the questions asked was, "As you look back, what do you remember as the happiest occasion of your life?" A high percentage replied, "My high-school prom." They'd never known happiness in their lives, you see. But as teenagers, at least, their dream-ship of happiness had yet to crash on the rocky coast of hard reality.

The fulfillment of one desire usually leads to the creation of still further desires. For desire conditions the mind to seek fulfillment outside itself. An apt metaphor for this desire-generating process is the nine-headed Hydra, a Greek monster of classical fame. Every time one of the Hydra's heads was stricken off, another would grow out in its place.

Hercules found the solution. After cutting off each of the Hydra's heads, he quickly cauterized the stump before a new one could grow out again.

Desires must be prevented from "growing out" again. "The best time to rid yourself of a desire," Paramhansa Yogananda taught, "is at the very moment when you first think of it."

Self-affirmation induces self-limitation. Ego-centeredness builds its own prison; it contracts a person's consciousness, closing him off from life. The selfish person hopes to create a "self-support system" in the things he acquires. In the end, however, he feels himself stranded and alone, as though in a hostile universe.

It is unselfish people who are always happy. Their sympathy and their consciousness expand ever outward, toward freedom in God-consciousness.

Action without personal motive, guided steadfastly by the equanimity of wisdom, is one of the surest ways of attaining everlasting happiness..

Thus, through the Bhagavad Gita, God has spoken to mankind. Back to Top of Page

Longest Reading from the Book
The Promise of Immortality

#19 Restlessness vs. God-Centeredness

This reading is from the Gospel of St. Luke, Chapter 10, Verses 38–42:

“Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus’ feet, and heard his word.

“But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me.

“And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

This story is usually repeated to contrast the two paths to God: the outer one, of service, and the inner one, of prayer and meditation. In Western monasticism, these two ways are epitomized in the religious orders: those devoted to “good works” such as teaching, healing, and feeding the poor, and those designed primarily for a life of prayer and contemplation. In India, the inner way is usually given the greater emphasis, but the path of action, or karma yoga, also has numerous adherents.

Both paths are spiritually valid. Indeed, each usually needs the other, for balance. Jesus in this passage, however, was not even saying that Martha’s activity was spiritually valid. Instead, he scolded her for her lack of spiritual focus.

Could his meaning possibly have been that service itself is lower in God’s eyes than a life of silence and prayer? Of course not! Many times during his mission, in fact, he praised service as highly as he did prayer and meditation. “God is a Spirit,” he said, emphasizing the latter, “and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24); but he said also: “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren [served them, in other words] ye have done it unto me.” (Matthew 25:40)

Worldly minded Christians commonly seek to justify their entanglement in material interests by saying, “Well, we ‘Marthas’ of the world are needed, too.” Worldly minded Hindus, like their Western counterparts, often try to excuse their materialistic tendencies by pointing to the example of Arjuna, whom Krishna urged to “fight” in the righteous war at Kurukshetra. Both groups—superficial Christians and superficial Hindus alike—miss the truth those scriptures were propounding. For whereas both outer service and inner communion are paths to God, activity alone, with an only nominally spiritual aim, is not the path of karma yoga; it is not, in itself, a spiritual service. Jesus was not scolding Martha for serving him, but for her restlessness. Nor was he comparing the relative merits of service and meditation. What he said was, “Mary’s is the only way.” His words were a rebuke, not a qualified compliment. He was telling Martha that she was too much centered in her work. She should have been thinking of God even in the midst of physical activity. Thus would her activity have been transformed into a path to God.

Martha’s error was one into which devotees often fall. In her own opinion, no doubt, she was serving God, but Jesus said to her, “If you allow your mind to become wholly engrossed in your work, how can that work be spiritual? You are not with God. What you are serving is your own restlessness!”

Martha’s mind was filled with thoughts of all those dishes steaming on the stove, of endless dicing and slicing and sifting and spicing to produce a feast for their honored guests. The needs of work, however, should not have become her excuse for spiritual absent-mindedness. Had her work been offered up mentally to God, the meal itself, in fact, would have turned out better than it could have, produced in agitation of mind.

The consciousness with which a thing is done infuses into the product itself the vibrations of that consciousness. This is true especially in the case of food preparation, for what one eats permeates the body, and is not something merely felt with the hands or appreciated with the eyes. The concern Jesus expressed to Martha, however, was not so much for the vibrations she was putting into the food as for Martha herself. He was saying, “Deepen your attunement with my spirit.”

Needless to say, Martha did reap spiritual benefits from her work, as anyone does who works for God, however superficially. She was depriving herself only of the deeper blessings that might have been hers had she been centered more within. “Martha consciousness,” then, is an error not of commission, but of omission. Martha was serving the Master outwardly, but not in her heart. She accepted that Jesus was a great spiritual teacher, but she was not attuned to his soul vibrations.

On another occasion, Jesus explained the importance of drawing upon the spiritual consciousness of a true master. “He that receiveth a prophet,” he said, “in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward.” (Matthew 10:41)

To be a prophet means to be united in consciousness with God. A person who lives a merely righteous life may not even believe in God, necessarily. To receive a prophet’s reward means to attract those blessings which result, finally, in becoming a prophet oneself. To receive a righteous man’s reward means to acquire merely good karma: a fortunate and happy life on earth, and a long residence in heaven, perhaps, after death. By good karma alone, however, it is not possible to be freed from all karmic bondage. “Chains, though of gold,” it has been wisely said, “still bind.”

To receive a prophet, then, “in the name of a prophet” means to attune oneself with the prophet’s spirit. Outward service to him should be performed with awareness of the grace flowing through him.

That same flow continues on to others through his disciples. Jesus, after describing those who would receive a prophet’s reward, went on to say, “Believe me, anyone who gives even a drink of water to one of these little ones, only in the name of a disciple [that is, with the thought that he is my disciple], will by no means lose his reward.” (Matthew 10:42)

As an interesting aside here, Paramhansa Yogananda included in the meaning of the word prophet those disciples of a great master who, even if they are not yet liberated, are highly advanced spiritually. In conversation with the author, he once remarked, “Judas had some bad karma, as a result of which he fell, spiritually. But he was also a prophet.” The author expressed surprise at this astonishing description of the greatness of Judas. Yogananda then, with a typically Indian head-gesture of affirmation, replied, “Oh, yes! He had to be, to be one of the disciples.”

He continued, “Judas was spiritually liberated in this century, in India. I knew him there personally. Jesus appeared in vision to a great master, and asked him to give his disciple liberation.”

The author, fascinated, then inquired, “What was Judas like in this life?”

“Very withdrawn in himself,” the Master replied. “He still showed traces of his old attachment to money—not in the sense of desiring it personally, but as a means of helping others. His brother disciples teased him about it. The guru, however, reproached them quietly. ‘Don’t,’ he said.”

Martha is an example of the ordinary devotee, who serves God nominally but whose mind is elsewhere. Superficial service of this kind is thrust at God, so to speak, without pausing, first, to intuit whether He really wants it or not! It is a presumption, not a loving offering. Had Martha been thinking lovingly of God as she worked, Jesus would certainly have approved, not disapproved, of her activity. He might even have sent Mary to the kitchen to help her. Indeed, he may have done so anyway; the Bible doesn’t tell us he did not, and we know from other accounts of his concern for other people’s needs. What he wanted of Martha was that she work with devotion and non-attachment, and not with busy fretfulness and the anxiety that he scold her sister.

To serve God with the right attitude is purifying. It opens the heart to divine love, and enables that love to flow out to others, changing their lives.

Jesus, here, was actually offering three teachings in one. The first concerned non-attachment while serving. The second underscored the need, while serving, for keeping the mind focused on God. And the third emphasized the supreme importance of inner communion.

Without non-attachment one may still acquire good karma, but one will not attain inner freedom. If the mind is not on God, even the good karma one acquires will be less. And without inner communion, it is not possible to experience God as a reality, or, ultimately, to realize Him.

Jesus’ reproach to Martha was not for her service, as such; and his praise of Mary was not for the choice she’d made not to serve. “Mary’s part,” as he termed it, alludes to the true goal of the spiritual path. Without developing the awareness of God’s presence, service itself may be described as merely a “good karmic investment.” Nor is that “good investment” as beneficial, outwardly, as people like to think. Jesus once said to Judas, “The poor you have with you always.” The world is never greatly improved, whether socially or in any other way, by serving it with a worldly attitude. What is needed is that people’s consciousness be uplifted.

“Mary’s part,” then, deserves special treatment, which it will receive in the next chapter. Meanwhile, let us bear in mind that living for God means remaining aware of His presence, especially in the heart. What counts is not the wearing of long robes, the bellowing of loud chants, and the decorous waving of sticks of incense. The important thing is the devotion, love, and concentration we offer up in the stillness of our own hearts.

The Bhagavad Gita expounds these themes also. Action, it says, must be undertaken first in a spirit of service, and not restlessly or for personal gain. Ego-motivated action is not karma yoga. Rather, it is merely karma. It doesn’t lead to union with God, but only to continued involvement in delusion.

Stanza forty-nine of the Second Chapter of the Gita states:

“Actions performed under the influence of desire are greatly inferior to those which are guided by wisdom. Happiness eludes people when they act from motives of self-interest. Seek shelter, therefore, in the equanimity of wisdom.”

Action is guided by wisdom when it is kept centered in calmness, and in that calmness, offered to God. The highest action stems not even from the thinking mind. This level of “actionless activity,” however, is not possible without high spiritual realization.

It is important to understand that the Gita, too, is not warning against activity itself. Indeed, its entire dialogue is a call to act, but in an uplifted state of mind. The Gita even states that God cannot be realized by mere renunciation of activity. Its warning, then, is the same as that which Jesus gave to Martha. It is a warning against ego-involved activity.

Self-interest leads to attachment. Attachment stirs up restless winds of eager anticipation. If one’s effort ends in failure, there ensue driving rains of disappointment, anger, and discouragement. But if, on the other hand, they end in success, there ensue blinding snow flurries of excitement, which are equally disturbing to mental equilibrium.

“Why, O mind, wanderest thou? Go in thy inner home!” These words from a devotional chant by Paramhansa Yogananda offer the ultimate solution to all human seeking. The satisfaction of a desire brings rest to the mind only temporarily. Lasting release comes through non-attachment to satisfaction itself. This doesn’t mean that the end of all striving is an attitude of indifference, but rather that true soul-joy is attained only in transcending mere emotional satisfaction.

Rather than renounce activity, then, we should renounce personal motives. Desirelessly we should serve God with love, enthusiastically. The conclusive argument against desire-motivated activity is that it is self-defeating! People who act from self-interest do so from a desire for happiness, but any fulfillment they glimpse is but fleeting. Like snowflakes on a warm day, the fulfillment of desire melts within minutes to form shapeless puddles of unhappiness.

Look at the “snapshots” that memory holds in the mind: those, first, of little children. How fairly bursting they are with energy and enthusiasm, dancing about and laughing gaily! How suddenly their enthusiasm dissolves, then, into wails of tears and disappointment! The dualities of this world are more evident in them, for their feelings have not yet been reined in by adversity. Instead, they are like the balls they love to bounce on the pavement: up and down, ceaselessly up and down.

Then observe those same children as they grow older. On reaching adolescence, they start to spin threads of ambition for the future and weave them into colorful tapestries that depict their dreams of success. “Someday,” they assure themselves, “I’ll have a good job, be rich, and be loved by a beautiful wife or a dashing husband. We’ll live in a lovely home and raise wonderful children. Oh, how everybody will envy us!” At seventeen, the future seems to stretch out before them like a verdant meadow, blanketed with fragrant, colorful flowers of fulfillment.

Then see those same people at twenty-five. Don’t their eyes already betray a slightly driven look—a hint of inner tension? Their voices are beginning to have a slight edge; their gaze, a suggestion of dogged determination to beat life at its own game. Life already is becoming more of a struggle than they expected. “Well,” they console themselves, “I still have my dreams intact.”

How, then, do we find them at forty? Many, alas, have already grown irascible in the face of life’s disappointments!

Look at the final snapshots in that photo album. People at the age of sixty, seventy, seventy-five, and older: How do you find them? The race is finished for them; their energy is spent. How pathetically little there is to show for all those years of struggle and pain!

A survey was once made of people in their late thirties and early forties. The question was put to them: “What was the happiest day of your life?” Many discounted their later years of supposed “success,” and replied sadly, “The day of my high-school prom!” Years of strenuous effort had brought them no happiness. All they could do was look back nostalgically to a time, years earlier, before their dream ship of hope had crashed on the hard rocks of reality. One wonders: Did nostalgia itself supply a sweetness that was, perhaps, absent on the actual occasion?

Waves surging on the sea are wrinkled with many ripples. Every wave of desire, similarly, cresting to fulfillment, is wrinkled with little ripples of further, not fully formed desires. Fulfillment conditions the mind to seek further and still further fulfillment. In this respect, desires are like the nine-headed Hydra of Greek mythology, whose heads grew out again as often as they were stricken off. Hercules discovered the solution to the problem: Quickly he cauterized each stump the moment he’d lopped off the head. His method suggests how we ourselves might handle desires: We should prevent them from growing again by “cauterizing” them at the root. As Paramhansa Yogananda said, “The best way to rid yourself of desire is to catch it at that moment when it first appears in the mind.”

Modern “wisdom,” by contrast, plumbs the subconscious for clues to human motivation. It encourages people to raise to the surface whatever reeking denizen they find in those murky depths. “Don’t suppress your desires,” it says. “Bring them into the open. Gaze at them; only then, release them. That way, you’ll free yourself of them.” How often, ask yourself, has this system worked for you? Not often, surely. In fact, only when the desire itself was quite superficial.

Another school of thought is more valid in the sense that it doesn’t actually ask for trouble. Its method, however, helps only those who have already achieved some measure of mental detachment. This method demands an attitude of impartiality. “Watch your thoughts and desires,” it teaches. “If you gaze at them calmly, they will shrivel and disappear.”

The first suggestion, that of plumbing the subconscious, might be described as the “primal scream” approach. The attempt to rid oneself of harmful emotions by giving them free rein results in only temporary relief. That relief is followed, almost as soon as the “purgative” screams have died away, by an exuberant resurgence. It seems an attractive therapy, for people do tend to prefer the way of least resistance. What soon becomes evident, however, is that it has lent added strength to those “complexes” by affirming them.

As for dispassionate self-observation, this may be effective in the peaceful atmosphere of a Buddhist monastery where few distractions exist. For busy modern people, however, caught up as they are in a swirl of intense activity, to watch one’s thoughts “impartially” is not only impossible, but, potentially at least, disastrous. Self-observation needs to be practiced from a center of deep, inner calmness, and preferably in a superconscious state. Otherwise. it isn’t one’s problems that shrivel and disappear: It is one’s own peace of mind! Worse still, one may lose faith in one’s own ability to do anything at all to improve oneself. For the problems, once they are held close to the eyes, loom larger than ever.

Neither self-indulgence nor self-preoccupation brings Self-liberation. Rather, both practices imprison the mind in the ego. In the process, they shut out a world of opportunities for self-development and deepening understanding. Self-centered people try to create a “self-support system” by wrapping themselves in a blanket of indifference to everything and everyone but themselves. They find themselves at last, however, stranded and alone in a hostile universe. (Such, at least, is their perception of things.)

It is those who give selflessly of themselves who attain happiness. Their sympathy for others expands their awareness. It is in self-expansion that happiness is found. Action without personal motive, guided by equanimity, brings not only inner stillness, but a deep sense of joy.

To return, then, to the story of Martha: The need for God-centeredness during activity is clear. But there remains an important question: How?

Those steaming pots in the kitchen were the challenge Martha faced. What if the rice burned, the vegetables got over-cooked, the stew boiled over and created a mess on the stove? Martha could not have dismissed these concerns by merely closing her eyes and denying their existence, while affirming, “Peace! Be still!”

Inner attunement must be adapted to outer necessities. The devotee must strengthen, and not relinquish, his grip on reality. He can do that by accepting it calmly, not by rejecting it, nor by seizing on it desperately as something that “has to be done!” The best way to strengthen one’s “grip” on reality is not with tension, but by mentally sharing all that one does with God.

Consider an example: People often find themselves at work chatting with others. Why not, then, talk inwardly with God? Why not sing to Him? If outward singing is not feasible, then why not sing inwardly? Repeat mentally, “I am Thine, Lord! Be Thou mine!” Other word-formulae will do as well; choose one that you find inspiring. This practice is known in India as japa. It holds an honored place in Christian mystical tradition as well.

Yogananda once had a vision of St. Francis of Assisi in which the saint gave him this beautiful poem, which he called, simply, “God! God! God!”:

From the depths of slumber,

As I ascend the spiral stairways of wakefulness,

I will whisper:

God! God! God!

Thou art the food, and when I break my fast

Of nightly separation from Thee,

I will taste Thee, and mentally say,

God! God! God!

No matter where I go, the spotlight of my mind

Will ever keep turning on Thee;

And in the battle din of activity, my silent war-cry will be:

God! God! God!

When boisterous storms of trials shriek,

And when worries howl at me,

I will drown their noises by loudly chanting

God! God! God!

When my mind weaves dreams

With threads of memories,

On that magic cloth will I emboss:

God! God! God!

Every night, in time of deepest sleep,

My peace dreams and calls, Joy! Joy! Joy!

And my joy comes singing evermore:

God! God! God!

In waking, eating, working, dreaming, sleeping,

Serving, meditating, chanting, divinely loving,

My soul will constantly hum, unheard by any:

God! God! God!

That single word, “God,” can be repeated endlessly. Alternatively, you may like to repeat (or to sing mentally) the entire poem. Repetition will make it much easier to keep God’s presence in mind.

Yogananda made a further interesting remark on this subject, “Once I was working so hard,” he said, “that I was afraid of forgetting God. Then all at once I realized that, in the very thought, I was remembering Him!”

Remembrance of God must be practiced consciously and deliberately. Activity is not so much a time for receiving energy as for giving it. God-remembrance must be charged with energy. Only thus can we offset the energy demanded of us by our work. Gradually, putting intense energy into everything we do, our minds become conditioned to the upliftment needed for raising our consciousness, later, in meditation.

These two paths then, meditation and service, must work together. “When they are balanced,” Yogananda said, “then meditation helps your work, and work helps your meditation.”

Pause every now and then, when your work allows it, and momentarily be aware of God’s inner presence. Breathe deeply several times. As you inhale, affirm “I”; as you exhale, affirm “AM.” Thus: “I (in) . . . AM! (out).” Or, alternatively, breathe in and out with the affirmation, “God (in) . . . IS! (out).” or, “Joy! . . . Joy! (both in and out).” When resuming your work, concentrate on the energy-flow itself. Remember, divine energy is the true power behind everything you do, physically.

Then continue to sing in your heart, “I am Thine! Thou art mine! I am Thine! Be Thou mine!” If words are not feasible—for example, if words are needed in your work—concentrate on the energy in your heart chakra, then uplift that energy to the Christ center between the eyebrows. Whatever energy you feel in these chakras, offer it up to God in joyful devotion.

Your work, when performed in the right spirit, becomes itself a kind of meditation. “Mary’s part” in the Biblical story was not so very different from what Martha’s might have been, had Martha been acting consciously for God.

One final thought: When singing or talking mentally to God, address Him, or Her, in the second person. Think “You” (or “Thou”), not “He” or “She.” When you feel the flow of inner energy, share that flow with the Divine Beloved. No one in any case can do anything by his power alone. We are all parts of the Infinite! Feel, then, that you and God are working together; that, together, you are directing energy through your mind and body.

“The greater the will,” Paramhansa Yogananda used to say, “the greater the flow of energy.” Direct energy with will power and joy. See yourself as playing, dancing, and working with God: hand in hand together through all activity.

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