Karma-Yoga : Ch-7. Part-6.

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CHAPTER VII .FREEDOM : :

Part-6.

But it is a most difficult thing to give up the clinging to this universe; few ever attain to that.

There are two ways to do that mentioned in our books.



One is called the "Neti, Neti" (not this, not this), the other is called "Iti" (this); the former is the negative, and the latter is the positive way.

The negative way is the most difficult. It is only possible to the men of the very highest, exceptional minds and gigantic wills who simply stand up and say, "No, I will not have this," and the mind and body obey their will, and they come out successful.

But such people are very rare.


The vast majority of mankind choose the positive way, the way through the world, making use of all the bondages themselves to break those very bondages.

This is also a kind of giving up; only it is done slowly and gradually, by knowing things, enjoying things and thus obtaining experience, and knowing the nature of things until the mind lets them all go at last and becomes unattached.

The former way of obtaining non-attachment is by reasoning, and the latter way is through work and experience.



The first is the path of Jnnna-Yoga, and is characterized by the refusal to do any work; the second is that of Karma-Yoga, in which there is no cessation from work.

Every one must work in the universe.

Only those who are perfectly satisfied with the Self, whose desires do not go beyond the Self, whose mind never strays out of the Self, to whom the Self is all in all, only those do not work.

The rest must work.



A current rushing down of its own nature falls into a hollow and makes a whirlpool, and, after running a little in that whirlpool, it emerges again in the form of the free current to go on unchecked.

Each human life is like that current.

It gets into the whirl, gets involved in this world of space, time, and causation, whirls round a little, crying out, "my father, my brother, my name, my fame", and so on, and at last emerges out of it and regains its original freedom.

The whole universe is doing that.



Whether we know it or not, whether we are conscious or unconscious of it, we are all working to get out of the dream of the world.

Man's experience in the world is to enable him to get out of its whirlpool.

Swami Vivekananda
To be continued  ...



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