Sachchidananda 'The Life Divine' Book I,Ch.9, 10, 11, 12 - Track 507

Question: Doing nothing would be doing nothing, or would it be doing everything but without anybody?

Answer: Really nothing.

Comment: Except to know that you are the kitten in the cat’s mouth?

Even that you have to forget because the moment you, you are right actually. If you reach that level consciously, you know consciousness is plunged into consciousness. Even that what you call consciousness is no more the consciousness, so that awareness is plunged to awareness. In that awareness you have to be aware that you are carried by God. If you have that you don’t need to read all this at all.

The extent to which we can do this even in little ways, it’s a tremendous help. Sri Ramakrishna’s example very often is taken that he was almost illiterate but  he was like a cat’s child. It is because of this and this was certainly a method and afterwards, when he had attained he spoke words which even the highest intellectual could not understand, so that is another side. Vivekananda represents the intellectual questioning of the highest science. Infact the conquest of Vivekananda by Sri Ramakrishna it was a real conquest. Vivekananda had rejected all the so called pundits of his time and said that all of them talk of god, but the moment he put the question have you seen God? Nobody could answer this question. It was only Sri Ramakrishna who could say, ‘yes I see him and I can see him more vividly than I see you.’ The capacity to answer this question is one of the greatest events of modern India, of the modern world that intellectual heights which could not arrive at a conclusion by the contact of this spiritual light. So the knowledge which burst from that experience is capable of answering this highest intellectual question.

When you rise from here, you arrive at a point and when you reach the climax, when you begin to pour the knowledge that knowledge again is of such a nature, for example, he said God is both formless and form. For him it was a simple proposition and this is a proposition which is very vividly made in this chapter of seven pages. God is both form and formless, but intellectually how are you to understand it?

As Sri Aurobindo has said that we arrive at a point, which intellectually is untranslatable. We fall into contradiction when we try to understand it, but these were the terms which Sri Ramakrishna used quite easily, as if it was a daily experience. For him there was nothing mysterious about it, nothing contradictory about it. If you start with this and if you can attain to it then this path is entirely dispensable, there is no need whatsoever to pursue this path.

There is also the path of Karma Yoga, where you don’t need to have that cat’s child consciousness of doing nothing at all. On the contrary, answers your bursting of energy of doing something, all the time go on doing. Those who are active like all of us, who can’t even remain quiet for one minute, for them karma yoga may be regarded as the easiest method. But even in that method the effort is as great the method which is involved here in the intellectual understanding. What is the difficulty there? The first difficulty of that path is that you do the action, but do not be bound by the results. This is the very first wisdom of Karma Yoga.  There are other greater wisdoms but this is the most elementary wisdom. How many of us can act without being involved in the consequences. Infact we might say if we have nothing to attain, no result then we don’t do anything at all. Our normal condition of consciousness is such that we do all activities only to produce certain results and if you are told that do not think of consequences, do not get involved in consequences then what remains for us to do? So, the very first step of Karma Yoga is a very difficult task.

The second step is even more difficult that you do the action, realizing that you are not the doer of action. First was only connected with your doer-ship. You do action but you do not involve in the consequences. The second is you do the action but realize that you are not the doer of action, this is even a greater difficulty and the third step is even more difficult. You open upwards, know that you are not the doer, do not be involved in the consequences and the third thing is that you open yourself to, from where action is really proceeding. Action we believe normally is proceeding from our ideas, our imaginations, our desires for consequences and so on. This is what we think is the origin of our action, but when you know that you are not to be involved in the consequences, when you know that you are not the doer of action then you are able to open. Even this proposition becomes possible, when you know this then you open up. This opening is a very difficult task. You just open and when you open, you will find a tremendous force of action proceeding and just vibrating and going through you. It’s like electricity. Electric wire in which electricity is passing has an origin that origin is able to pass through electricity only because of the opening of the electric wire. If electric wire had no opening, electricity would not pass through it. Similarly there is an action of which we have today no imagination; no idea at all, but there is action. A tremendous flow of action what Sri Aurobindo speaks of in the very first paragraph of this chapter, where eons of activities, myriads of things, a stupendous movement, a stupendous energy which is already flowing. You open just open up and that energy will flow, that is the highest stage of Karma yoga. When you open up and that whole energy will flow.   As Sri Aurobindo says, – what is a flute? It is only a channel through which the wind blows and it is the One, who really blows the wind, Who makes the tune?  Flute doesn’t make a tune. So the whole life is designed by the one who plays the flute, the flute player that is why Sri Krishna’s picture is so wonderful that he is the flute player and we are only flutes and even these flutes are not we, they are made, fabricated by him. He is the fabricator, he is the wind and he is the blower.