“From highest Brahman to the yonder worm,
And to the very minutest atom,
Everywhere is the same God, the All-Love,
Friend, offer mind, soul, body, at their feet.
These are His manifold forms before thee,
Rejecting them, where seekest thou for God ?
Who loves all beings without distinction,
He indeed is worshiping best his God.”
There were two brothers, one was married and other was a bachelor. They owned a farm and shared its produce fifty-fifty. The soil was fertile and they reaped a rich harvest every year. All went well for a few years. Then something extraordinary happened.
The married brother began to wake up with a start from his sleep at night and think, “It is not fair. My brother isn’t married. He needs to save more for the future than me. I am a married man with a wife and five kids. I have all the security in the world. But what security has my poor brother? Who will look after him in his old age? My kids will care for me when I am old. My brother’s need is greater than mine.” With that the married man would leave his bed, steal over to his brother’s granary and pour there a sackful of his own share of grain.
Now the other brother too began to get these nightly attacks. He would wake up from his sleep and think, “It’s too bad that I should accept an equal share of the farm’s produce as my brother who has a family to maintain. I am single and my needs are minimal. He has got to support his wife and children. He deserves a larger share.” So this brother would get up, take a sackful of grain from his stock and empty it stealthily into his married brother’s granary.
Once it so happened that they got out of the bed at the same time and ran into each other, each carrying a grain-filled sack on his back! Years later, when the town wanted to build a temple (the story of the two brothers, who had passed away, had leaked out by then), the people there chose the spot where the two brothers had met that night. “This is the holiest of all places in this town,” the elders said, and a temple was constructed there.
Service (sevā) is indeed a sacred activity and the place where service is done is a holy place. Above all, only a holy person can give true service. Why true service? Is there such a thing as false service? There is, but of course it is not called by that name. That complicates matters. So we must begin by identifying the distinction between the two kinds of service.
One kind of service we are all familiar with. It is something good done for others prompted by the feelings of duty, pity or guilt, or with the desire for name and fame, or for happiness here and hereafter, or just as a part of social ritual. Service is a misnomer really for such an act. It is probably right to call it “good work,” because it does help the person served to some extent and may bring a feeling of satisfaction to the one who offers the service.
But that’s about all it does and nothing more. It brings lasting fulfillment neither to the one who is served nor to the one who serves. Nor does it bring the joy of freedom. It is possible to do such good work and yet remain selfish, arrogant, frustrated, even immoral. Spiritually speaking, this variety of so-called service perpetuates ignorance and, in the long run, helps neither the person nor society. It is clear that there is nothing particularly sacred about this work. If we must call it “service,” then we had better qualify the term with the adjective “false.”
But there is the other variety of service which elevates the person and benefits society. This service is not the result of pity, duty or guilt. It is the result of the perception of solidarity, of oneness, of identity, with the person served. There is no hesitation or calculation before doing this kind of service. It is a spontaneous act which comes to a person as naturally as breathing. It is free even from the idea “I am doing this service.” It is a free offering with no strings attached. Both the giver and the receiver feel blessed and uplifted.
This is service, and to distinguish it from the much-too-common variety described earlier, let us call this “true” service. This is the kind of service saints and genuinely holy men and women offer. What this means really is that if you and I are able to extend this kind of service to everyone and everything around us, we too shall become genuinely holy.
Perception of Oneness
Perception of oneness is the mother of true service. But how many of us actually perceive oneness? We only see diversity everywhere. No two things are exactly identical. Even twins are not identical in every respect. The basic distinction we experience in life is between this person who is me and everything else that is not me—the distinction between the “I” and the “not-I.” I am different from the rest and the rest differ among themselves. If there is some being called God, God too is different from me, just as God is different from everyone and everything else. Differences galore everywhere.
I can perceive oneness only if there is oneness. If it is true that oneness exists, the question is, why do I not perceive it? Vedanta teachers tend to answer it in this way: “We don’t perceive oneness because we don’t want to perceive it. If we close our eyes and deny the sun because we don’t perceive it, does that mean the sun doesn’t exist?”
This can be countered, of course, by saying that everyone sees the sun and the denial by any person would be clearly invalid and unacceptable. But such is not the case with oneness. The fact is, no one sees oneness, though quite a number of people talk or write about it. The perception of the many is a universal experience and cannot be wished away by simply saying that it is the result of ignorance.
This may not be true, however. It is quite all right to say, “I do not perceive oneness,” but what right have I to claim that no one perceives oneness? If something is true in my case, must it be true for others also? I am not the standard by which the world ought to be judged. The claim “no one perceives oneness” is an overreach. We can concede, however, that the number of people who perceive oneness is in all likelihood extremely small, almost microscopic, as compared to the billions who perceive the many.
It is natural to wonder why these handful of people who see oneness could be right and the legions who see the many could be wrong. Apart from the fact that the truth of oneness is validated by the scriptures (see, for instance, Chāndogya Upaniṣad, 3.14.1 and Kaṭhopaniṣad, 2.1.10-11) and is also being admitted by scientists and scholars (read, for instance, writings of Ken Wilber, Abraham Maslow, David Bohm, and Fritzof Capra), the experience of oneness is known to have brought total, irrevocable fulfillment, joy and freedom to those who perceived oneness. How can this be the result of a false experience?
Experiencing the many, on the other hand, is not known to have brought total fulfillment, bliss and freedom to anyone. On the contrary, as we know from our own life, it perpetuates the sense of incompleteness, bondage, imperfection, and the alternating experience of fleeting happiness and sorrow. These are the very things every one of us is struggling to overcome. If the experience of oneness can help us overcome these—and we know it has helped a few brave and determined souls in every generation—then it seems reasonable to assume that there must be something wrong with our present experience of seeing the many. That “something wrong,” according to the Gītā (5.15, 7.25), is ignorance.
When did this ignorance come upon us? Every kind of ignorance seems like it never had a beginning. If I am ignorant of the speed of light and ask, “When did my ignorance start?” I’ll probably end up saying that it’s always been there. But my ignorance can vanish the moment someone tells me what the speed of light is. It’s futile to worry about when my ignorance started. I’m never going to know the answer. All I need to do is to recognize the presence of ignorance and focus on how I can get rid of it.
The method is simple enough. Here are Sri Ramakrishna’s words:
“If one thing is placed upon another, you must remove the one to get the other. Can you get the second thing without removing the first?” (Gospel, p. 944)
And here are Holy Mother’s:
“You have rolled different threads on a reel—red, black and white. While unrolling you will see them all exactly in the same way.” (Teachings of Sri Sarada Devi, p. 32)
The knowledge of my true self is covered by ignorance. To get knowledge, ignorance has to be removed first. This is what Sri Ramakrishna’s words signify. Holy Mother’s words deal with the steps that separate knowledge from ignorance. She says that I have to go back the same way I came. From the experience of oneness I have somehow arrived at the experience of the many. If I know the steps that brought me down from the heights of oneness to the depths of multiplicity, I can go upward by tracing the same steps in the reverse direction.
From the One to the Many
In the beginning there was only the self. There was no one else. The self was all that existed. It was complete (pūrṇa), eternal (nitya), infinite (ananta), indivisible (akhaṇḍa), pure (śuddha), conscious (buddha), and free (mukta). (See Chāndogya Upaniṣad, 6.2.1, Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, 1.4.10, Taittirīyopaniṣad, 2.1.1, Kaṭhopaniṣad, 1.2.18, Gitā, 2. 23-25).
Then something mysterious seems to have happened. A kind of division suddenly took place in what was really indivisible. The self, the one and only reality, somehow became fragmented into three apparently different entities: God (also called paramātman, the supreme self), the world (sometimes called anātman, the non-self), and me (called jīvātman, the individual self). When cracks appear, they have a tendency to spread. So a further fragmentation of these entities was inevitable. The world got divided and subdivided into countless number of objects and creatures of all sizes, shapes, colors, and characteristics. The extent of these divisions and the variety in the universe are mind-boggling.
Divisions took place in the individual self too. To begin with, there was the obvious division into body and mind, and the not-so-obvious estrangement of the two from the inner self (pratyagātman). The mind was subdivided into the unconscious (called id) and the conscious (called ego) fragments. These divisions were strange. They divided the personality without taking apart the individual fragments. It was like a broken marriage but the unfortunate couple continuing to live under the same roof. Naturally this gave rise to stress and strain. The body and mind were separate but they continued to influence each other. The unconscious and the conscious parts of the mind were divided but they continued to pull and drag the person, often in mutually opposite directions.
The net result of all these multiple fragmentations was that the self became limited and localized. The self (ātman), the real me, became identified with a body and a mind, and alienated from everything else. My identification with the body and mind too was not stable. Sometimes I identified with the body, sometimes with the mind, sometimes with both, and sometimes with neither (as in deep sleep). I became alienated from the spiritual essence of my being and, worse, did not even know that I was so alienated.
The conscious part of my mind became alienated from the unconscious as well as from the world around. In this way the self became even more narrowed down as it got identified not with the whole personality but only with a fragment of it at any given time. The other fragments thus remained alienated, and it is these fragments that destroyed my peace, upset my harmony, and robbed me of the sense of fulfillment and wholeness. Thus I became, so to speak, alienated from myself.
Much has been written about self-alienation. Some of the best minds in the fields of philosophy, psychology and sociology have pored over the problem of alienation. Their interpretations varied because their ideas of the self varied and also because their perspectives and approaches were different. Nevertheless, they have come up with valuable insights and have enriched our understanding of this central problem of human existence.
We have seen how we descended from the state of oneness to the state of mutually conflicting many. From the one to the many the descent is complete. The fall—allegorized in the story of Adam and Eve—was from the state of oneness. From one have emerged the many, and the many must merge back into the one. The fallen me must rise again. The upward march toward unity must begin. The broken fragments constituting “the many” must be joined, the divisions must be removed. It is here that service comes into the picture.
From the Many to the One
There are two approaches to the problem of overcoming the many. First the popular approach. When pieces have to be joined together, we use an adhesive. Love is the adhesive that joins the many into one whole. Love grows in an unselfish person and expresses itself through service. So first and foremost we must all become unselfish and force ourselves to sacrifice for others and to do good to others.
In this approach, the self is objectified and certain moral rules are thrust upon it. We are expected to become unselfish, loving and charitable. The aim is to become someone different from what we are. This involves needless struggle and usually produces inner conflicts. Moreover, we seldom succeed fully in the struggle to become this and that. People go on trying to become unselfish and, to prove the point, doing good to others, but in the process create a lot of unhappiness for themselves and often for others as well.
Most of the efforts at social service in modern times show this phenomenon. In developed countries, social service is more organized and, in a sense, it comes naturally to the people there as a result of years of social discipline and upbringing. Thousands of small and big institutions and millions of men and women, young and old, are engaged in volunteer services of every kind. One would expect that, with so many unselfish people around, modern societies would be ideal. Would to God it was so! But we see that crime, violence, rape, drug addiction, neurosis etc are steadily increasing and the social fabric is crumbling in many parts of the world.
How do we explain this strange phenomenon? When self-alienated people do social service, they only increase their self-alienation and, consequently, their selfishness. This is what the Gītā (6.6) says:
बन्धुरात्मात्मनस्तस्य येनात्मैवात्मना जित: । अनात्मनस्तु शत्रुत्वे वर्तेतात्मैव शत्रुवत् ॥
bandhur-ātmā ātmanas-tasya yena ātmaiva ātmanā jitaḥ;
anātmanas-tu śatrutve varteta ātmaiva śatruvat.
“To the (self-possessed) person who has conquered the self by the self, the self is a friend. But in the (self-alienated) person whose self has become inimical, the self behaves like an enemy.”
Those portions of my personality from which I am alienated act like enemies and I develop a kind of hatred for them. But they are all parts of my own self and my hatred is really a subtle kind of self-hatred. This produces inner insecurity and the fear of facing myself.
Self-hatred can manifest itself in two ways. (1) I may project my self-hatred outward upon other people and thus attempt to cover up my inner hatred, fear and distrust by accumulating everything for myself and refusing to share it with others. They will naturally conclude that I am a selfish person. (2) It is also possible that my self-hatred may get projected inward and I may try to escape from myself through “service.” I’ll decide to become unselfish by trying to solve others’ problems—the underlying, undeclared (and often unacknowledged) reason being my fear of being left alone to confront my own problems. Others may praise my “unselfishness” without realizing that I am spending all my time and energy for others not out of a sense of duty, compassion, sympathy, or love for them (though these may be the ostensible reasons) but to avoid the horror and pain of confronting myself in the silence of my heart.
Indeed, it is not too unusual to see this happening even in the lives of those who turn to spiritual life. Well-meaning but self-alienated people busy themselves with so-called service, imagining they are seeing God in others, and end up after some time filled with disillusion, frustration and, in a few cases, even naked apathy. Many organizations launch service projects with much fanfare and enthusiasm, but are gradually reduced to petty politicking and to being controlled by power-hungry people. Why all this happens should not surprise us. For, service rendered by self-alienated people is no service at all in the true sense of the term. It is only a form of escape, and escapism has nothing to do with spiritual life.
A better approach to service is the existential approach. Here I am not expected to become anyone or anything; I simply have to be my true self. Unselfishness is my true nature. Love is only the dynamic aspect of the all-pervading unity of existence and this also is my true nature. I don’t have to move heaven and earth to become unselfish or try to fill myself with love. I only need to recognize that I am unselfish already. I have all the love in the world already within me.
If that is so, why do I not feel it? Evidently, some negative mechanism—“alienation”—is operating within me and acting as a hurdle to the manifestation of these spontaneous traits of my personality. All I have to do is remove the hurdles—or eliminate alienation—and my inherent selflessness and love will shine forth in a most natural way.
We have seen that as a result of alienation, my awareness gets localized and identified with a fragment rather than the whole of my personality. The remaining fragments are left in the dark, out of the field of my awareness. To remove alienation, I must expand my awareness and focus its light in every nook and corner of my personality. Through the practice of deep, healthy self-introspection or self-analysis and the help of an illumined spiritual teacher, the alienation of the conscious mind from the unconscious can be removed. Absolute purity of life, intense prayer and other devotional practices eliminate the alienation of the psyche from the true inner self. The alienation of the inner self from the supreme Self is overcome through higher knowledge and the grace of God. This is the final stage and, of course, I can be nowhere near it until the earlier stages are crossed.
But where does service come into the picture? Is it a means to de-alienation or only a result of it? It is both a means and a result. As a means, service not only helps to eliminate the alienation of the person from the world but is also an important aid to remove the alienation within one’s personality. Service as a means demands uncompromising conviction, great application, and extraordinary grit, and is understandably less than perfect. Service as a result is natural, spontaneous, and perfect.
Service as a Means
Service should not be undertaken in a big way until at least a certain amount of expansion of awareness has taken place. Learners are advised not to go toward the deep-end of the swimming pool until they have mastered at least the preliminaries of swimming. In the field of service too a similar rule applies. If we want to do true service, we must have at least the preliminary qualifications necessary to be a true server. When the process of de-alienation is set in motion to some extent, service comes in as a catalytic agent to speed up the process.
I mentioned the necessity of uncompromising conviction. What conviction? The conviction that oneness exists. Though I may not have yet “perceived” oneness, I must be convinced to the core that it exists nevertheless. Not only that; mere conviction is not enough. I must be prepared to make an all out effort to live—in thought, word and action—with the awareness of the undivided existence.
“Learn to make the world your own. No one is a stranger, my child; the whole world is your own.” When Sarada Devi told this to a disciple she was referring to the underlying oneness of all creation. Mother’s words seem to be suggest not “oneness” but “belonging.” “The world is my own” is clearly different from “I am the world.” But when put into practice, Mother’s teaching leads not to the experience of “belonging” to the world but to the experience of identity with it.
Just as I am no stranger to myself, nothing in the world should be a stranger to me. The love, care and attention that I bestow on myself must be offered to the whole world too, because the world is my own self in a different form. To serve with this idea obviously requires great application, inner strength and dogged perseverance—particularly because the immediate fallout of this practice may not always be pleasant and endearing.
Three questions arise: (1) The act of service needs at least two, the server and the served; how is service possible when there is only oneness? (2) Is it possible to live and serve with the idea of oneness without actually perceiving it? (3) Is it easy to cultivate this approach to service?
All the three questions are easily answered. Let us begin with the first: How is service possible when there is only oneness? Service can take place even when there is oneness. When my toe is stubbed, do I not tend it with all care and do everything to heal it? Granted, the hands that tend the toe are different from it, but the fact remains that they belong to one body animated by one conscious being. In the same way, service is possible in this universe which is, as it were, the gross body of the one, conscious, Supreme Being. (Gitā, 13. 13-15)
The second question, Is it possible to live with the idea of oneness without actually perceiving it? To live with the idea of something without perceiving it, is not as difficult as we imagine it to be. We have no difficulty accepting that the protective ozone layer around the earth is steadily depleting and the gaping hole in the layer is threatening some populated areas of our planet. With the exception of a few scientists, none of us has perceived all this, have we? Don’t we accept it as true and try to do something to avert the disaster? Similar is the case with oneness. If we can take the word of the scientists about the ozone layer, there is no reason why we cannot take the word of the spiritually enlightened about oneness.
The words of the spiritually enlightened are far more trustworthy than the words of those who deal with physical sciences. It doesn’t take long for one scientific theory to be contradicted by another and one technology to be superseded by another. The scientists are right only so long as they are not proved wrong, and history shows us that it is never long enough. On the other hand, the words of the spiritually enlightened have stood the test of time for the last God-knows-how-many centuries. The truth of oneness was proclaimed centuries ago and is enshrined in the Vedas, the oldest literature known to us today. It was true then and it is true today, because there were people who perceived it then and there are people who perceive it today.
Let it not be imagined, therefore, that this discussion is theoretical or only an intellectual exercise. In every generation there are people who have lived with the unshakeable conviction that oneness exists. They have moulded their lives on this conviction, and eventually experienced oneness. This realization brought them total freedom, absolute perfection, and ineffable bliss. If this was possible for some, it is possible for you and me as well. If it was possible in the past, it is certainly possible at present and in future too.
Now the third question: Is it easy to cultivate this kind of nondualistic approach to service? The truth is that “easy” and “difficult” are relative terms. What is easy for one may be difficult for another and what usually makes the difference is the intensity of faith in oneself, a firm determination to succeed, and dogged perseverance. With these in good measure, nothing is difficult; without these, nothing is easy.
Two methods are recommended for those who find it difficult to serve continually with the idea of oneness of all creation. One method is to maintain the constant awareness of one’s true nature as the spiritual self (ātman), distinct from body and mind. All activity is “outside”—merely forces of nature (prakṛti) acting and interacting upon one another. I am only their witness, unaffected and untouched (Gitā, 3. 27-28). All work is done only for work’s sake, not out of any other consideration or hope (Gitā, 18. 9).
The second method is suited particularly to those with a predominantly devotional temperament. Here all actions are done for the sake of God. The results of actions are offered to God. All work is God’s work. As a devotee, I am only a servant of God carrying out my master’s orders. Or, I can looks upon myself as a child of God, and all other beings as God’s children, and I can serve them with that idea in mind. (CW, 3. 83–84)
In his lectures on karma yoga, Swami Vivekananda has described both these methods for overcoming attachments and freeing oneself from the binding nature of karma (see CW, 1. 32, 56-60, 87-90, 98-107). Whichever of these methods I adopt, sooner or later I’ll discover that they lead me to the awareness of unity underlying the endless diversity in the universe. I may not still “perceive” oneness, but I can no longer doubt it. I begin to have a somewhat vague but persistent feeling that the whole universe is a cosmic, multidimensional conscious being (virāt puruṣa), and I joyfully serve this cosmic being as well as I can.
This is service as means at its best. As said earlier, this accelerates the process of de-alienation or reintegration. When this process reaches its logical conclusion, service as means has fulfilled its purpose. Whatever service I do thenceforth is spontaneous and perfect. It is service not as a means to de-alienation but as a wholesome result of it.
Service as a Result
When my awareness expands, it not only removes the alienation within my personality but also transcends at some stage the barrier of the body, and gradually engulfs more and more of the world around. When I am completely de-alienated, all frontiers vanish. Nothing limits me. I perceive the one, infinite, conscious being within and without. My every little act becomes a worship, every word a benediction. I discover that my true self is not different from the true self in each and every creature around. I perceive consciousness pulsating even in objects that are normally considered inanimate (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, 3.8.11, Muṇḍakopaniṣad, 2.2.11, Chāndogya Upaniṣad, 7.25.1-2, Gītā, 4. 24, 10. 20). I find that there is only one self appearing in countless forms (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 2.2.2, 2.2.9-10, Chāndogya Upaniṣad, 6.3.2). My love for my true self does not conflict with my love for others, because I see my own self in all, and I see all in my own self (Īśāvāsyopaniṣad, 6-7 and Gitā, 6. 29-32). I become immersed in the bliss of my self. I perceive oneness everywhere. I become free from all duties, responsibilities, obligations. Nothing binds me (Gitā, 3. 17-18). Yet I don’t stop working. Out of the fullness of my heart, out of the spontaneous love that gushes forth from my being for the whole of creation, I continue to serve (Gitā, 3. 25). This is true service.
When I am spiritually illumined, my service need not always take the form of external activity. I will do good to the world by just being who I am. My mere presence will do wonders and I’ll radiate peace, harmony, bliss all around. Whoever comes within the orbit of my influence will become blessed and get the strength, hope and faith necessary to pursue higher life.
Often we may know nothing about those who are spiritually illumined. “The highest men,” said Swami Vivekananda,
“are calm, silent, and unknown. They are the men who really know the power of thought; they are sure that, even if they go into a cave and close the door and simply think five truer thoughts and then pass away, these five thoughts of theirs will live through eternity. Indeed, such thoughts will penetrate through the mountains, cross the oceans, and travel through the world. They will enter deep into human hearts and brains, and raise up men and women who will give them practical expression in the workings of human life.” (CW, 1. 106)
Such illumined ones appear in every generation: a few among them become known; most pass away unknown. Known or unknown, they are the greatest benefactors of humanity. Through their lives we learn what this life is all about; through the kind of service they do we understand what true service means.
Summary
We have seen that true service is an act of holiness and it has its origin in the perception of the unity of all existence. Through some mysterious quirk this unity was disturbed. The one, undivided existence became fragmented into many seemingly different existences. This produced alienation, stress, conflicts—and, inevitably, sorrow.
To overcome this, the many have to be resolved back into the one. In other words, alienation must be removed. Since the breaking up into the many is essentially the apparent fragmentation and localization of the all-pervading consciousness, the resolving into the one calls for a progressive transformation and expansion of consciousness.
Several factors play important roles in the de-alienation process. Service is one of them. It acts as a catalyst to the process, provided it is done with the firm conviction (at this stage, there is no actual perception) in the oneness of all that exists. This purifies the heart and helps obliterate the various boundaries that stand as hurdles to the broadening of awareness. When the process of de-alienation is complete and I return to being a fully integrated being, I become perfect and am able to perceive “the one” behind the apparent and illusory “many.” Then, and only then, can I offer true service, which does lasting good to the world. (CW 5. 285)
If everything is ultimately one, who serves whom? The answer is, I serve myself, because there is no one else to be served. How the one, indivisible reality got divided into the many is, really speaking, a nonsensical question. If the indivisible could really get divided, it only means it was never indivisible to start with. On the other hand, if it really was indivisible, then absolutely nothing can divide it. Then what was all this discussion about the descent of the one to become the many and the ascent of the many to become the one? If it is impossible for the one to become the many, how did the impossible become possible?
The impossible can become possible only through ignorance. Which is to say, only ignorance can make the impossible appear as possible. Nothing but the ignorance of a coiled rope in a semlit room can turn it into a snake. Obviously, the rope’s transformation is only illusory. The awareness that it’s only a rope, not a snake, drives away the ignorance and the snake vanishes. In precisely the same way, ignorance divides the indivisible, absolute Being, Consciousness and Bliss (sat-cit-ānanda) into countless fragments. The divisions, obviously illusory, vanish when overrun by the expanding awareness that reveals the undivided nature of all that exists.
Why should I serve myself? No reason why I should, really. But when I discover ignorance having its sway over me, the only way I can kill it off is through knowledge, and service done in the proper spirit is an indispensable aid to the acquisition of knowledge. Once the floodlight of supreme knowledge dispels the gloomy darkness of ignorance, I become free. The service I do thenceforth is a free, spontaneous, perfect offering—not for the sake of knowledge, which I already have—but for the good of the world which I clearly see as my own self in another form.