Service

Service can do many things for us. First of all, we should know that service done in a divine spirit is the greatest opportunity that we have in our possession to kill our pride and vanity and to obliterate the stamp of ego. It is in dedicated service that we see the universal harmony, we grow into the universal consciousness.

Our will becomes God’s Will. What we call service is nothing but the fulfilment of the Divine Will. Here on earth one has the capacity; another has the need. The capacity and the need must go together. Capacity offered, not only is the need fulfilled, but also the capacity is recognised, the capacity is valued. Capacity by itself receives only partial satisfaction. But when capacity and need run abreast, full satisfaction dawns.

“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” In our daily life, this truth is significantly applicable.

God has to occupy one’s mind; and in this state of divine concentration, one should serve humanity. At that very hour, service itself becomes the greatest reward. Although meditation and service constitute totally different approaches in the field of spirituality, work and dedicated service are nothing short of pure meditation.

Krishna now tells us about pleasure and pain. “Sense-pleasure ends in pain. Hence sense-pleasure is shunned by the wise. Constant self-control is the real and perpetual happiness.”

Self-control continued, self-mastery dawns. The world-existence and the world-activity are at the command of self-mastery. The easiest way to achieve self-control is to take the path of self-consecration. Self-consecration is always blessed by the soul’s illumination. The turbulent forces of our senses must needs bow down to the soul’s illumination. He who has the inner illumination knows that his existence on earth is the embodiment of God and his actions are the expressions of God. He feels that he is never the doer; he is a mere instrument.

We now come to learn from the Gita what the body is. “The body is a city within nine gates.”

To quote Wesley La Violette from “An Immortal Song” (The Bhagavad Gita):

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The body is a city with many gates

in which the sovereign mind can

rest serenely.

Within that city is the sacred Temple

of the Spirit, Mind, where there is

no desire

to act, nor any motivating cause,

yet always the glad willingness

to follow Duty when it calls.

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It is true that the body has a sacred temple. Equally true is it that the body itself is hallowed. Whitman’s powerful assertion is to be gratefully welcomed. “If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred.”

Today the body is the insurmountable obstacle. Tomorrow this very body can be and will be the pride of Divinity, for in and through this body God shows the world what He looks like, what He does and what He is.

Towards the end of this chapter, Sri Krishna firmly says that sensuality has to be shunned totally in order for man to live in and possess Divinity fully. The tiger-passions have to be conquered. The aspirant has to concentrate constantly on his Liberator. Indeed, for him alone is the Goal, the Salvation unique.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita: the Song of the Transcendental Soul, Rudolf Steiner Publications, Blauvelt, New York, 1971
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/cbg