NON-ATTACHMENT IS COMPLETE SELF-ABNEGATION - 3

The second point to consider is, what is the end of work? We find the vast
majority of people in every country believing that there will be a time when
this world will become perfect, when there will be no disease, nor death, nor
unhappiness, nor wickedness. That is a very good idea, a very good motive
power to inspire and uplift the ignorant; but if we think for a moment, we shall
find on the very face of it that it cannot be so. How can it be, seeing that good
and evil are the obverse and reverse of the same coin? How can you have good
without evil at the same time? What is meant by perfection? A perfect life is a
contradiction in terms. Life itself is a state of continuous struggle between
ourselves and everything outside. Every moment we are fighting actually with
external nature, and if we are defeated, our life has to go. It is, for instance, a
continuous struggle for food and air. If food or air fails, we die. Life is not a
simple and smoothly flowing thing, but it is a compound effect. This complex
struggle between something inside and the external world is what we call life.
So it is clear that when this struggle ceases, there will be an end of life.
What is meant by ideal happiness is the cessation of this struggle. But then life
will cease, for the struggle can only cease when life itself has ceased. We have
seen already that in helping the world we help ourselves. The main effect of
work done for others is to purify ourselves. By means of the constant effort to
do good to others we are trying to forget ourselves; this forgetfulness of self is
the one great lesson we have to learn in life. Man thinks foolishly that he can
make himself happy, and after years of struggle finds out at last that true
happiness consists in killing selfishness and that no one can make him happy
except himself. Every act of charity, every thought of sympathy, every action
of help, every good deed, is taking so much of self-importance away from our
little selves and making us think of ourselves as the lowest and the least, and,
therefore, it is all good. Here we find that Jnâna, Bhakti, and Karma — all
come to one point. The highest ideal is eternal and entire self-abnegation,
where there is no "I," but all is "Thou"; and whether he is conscious or
unconscious of it, Karma-Yoga leads man to that end. A religious preacher may
become horrified at the idea of an Impersonal God; he may insist on a Personal
God and wish to keep up his own identity and individuality, whatever he may
mean by that. But his ideas of ethics, if they are really good, cannot but be
based on the highest self-abnegation. It is the basis of all morality; you may
extend it to men, or animals, or angels, it is the one basic idea, the one
fundamental principle running through all ethical systems.