FREEDOM - 5

Next in order come the men with more Rajas, or activity, combative natures,
who take up the ideas of the perfect ones and preach them to the world. The
highest kind of men silently collect true and noble ideas, and others — the
Buddhas and Christs — go from place to place preaching them and working for
them. In the life of Gautama Buddha we notice him constantly saying that he is
the twenty-fifth Buddha. The twenty-four before him are unknown to history,
although the Buddha known to history must have built upon foundations laid
by them. The highest men 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 true 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.
These Sattvika men are too near the Lord to be active and to fight, to be
working, struggling, preaching and doing good, as they say, here on earth to
humanity. The active workers, however good, have still a little remnant of
ignorance left in them. When our nature has yet some impurities left in it, then
alone can we work. It is in the nature of work to be impelled ordinarily by
motive and by attachment. In the presence of an ever active Providence who
notes even the sparrow's fall, how can man attach any importance to his own
work? Will it not be a blasphemy to do so when we know that He is taking care
of the minutest things in the world? We have only to stand in awe and
reverence before Him saying, "Thy will be done". The highest men cannot
work, for in them there is no attachment. Those whose whole soul is gone into
the Self, those whose desires are confined in the Self, who have become ever
associated with the Self, for them there is no work. Such are indeed the highest
of mankind; but apart from them every one else has to work. In so working we
should never think that we can help on even the least thing in this universe. We
cannot. We only help ourselves in this gymnasium of the world. This is the
proper attitude of work. If we work in this way, if we always remember that
our present opportunity to work thus is a privilege which has been given to us,
we shall never be attached to anything. Millions like you and me think that we
are great people in the world; but we all die, and in five minutes the world
forgets us. But the life of God is infinite. "Who can live a moment, breathe a
moment, if this all-powerful One does not will it?" He is the ever active
Providence. All power is His and within His command. Through His command
the winds blow, the sun shines, the earth lives, and death stalks upon the earth.
He is the all in all; He is all and in all. We can only worship Him. Give up all
fruits of work; do good for its own sake; then alone will come perfect nonattachment.
The bonds of the heart will thus break, and we shall reap perfect
freedom. This freedom is indeed the goal of Karma-Yoga.