THE PATH OF SELFLESS ACTION

 The path of selfless action is the foundation of spiritual life. Discharging one's duties with pure motives with respect to one's station in life, in accordance with one's natural abilities, inborn qualities and innate capacities; performing every action as a loving devotional service to the Lord, sacrificing the fruits of the action including any desire for fruitive rewards or expectations of return or recognition...is the highest form of devotional worship. This is karma yoga or the path of purification by the performance of selfless action for attaining equanimity of mind and purity of disposition. Surrendering the results of all actions and activities is known as karm phal sanyas...or renunciation of fruitive rewards. The easiest form of following the path of action is to develop nishkam bhava while performing actions i.e. performing all actions and ordained activities without selfish motives, desires, attachments, entitlements and expectations. This is the performance of 'work as duty'. The next higher stage of performing karma yoga is to perform 'work as worship' by performing every action as a loving devotional service to the Lord, seeing the Lord in all actions and in all beings and serving all beings with love through every action and activity. In this manner, all work and worldly activities are spiritualised and transformed into karma yoga. Thus, every action becomes an act of worship of the Lord by performing worldly activities with a spiritual attitude and surrendering the results and fruits of the action to the Lord as a loving devotional service, rendered to serve and please the Lord, expecting no reward, recognition or material gain in return. This leads to immense spiritual fulfilment and inner purification experienced as ever-increasing placidity and equanimity of mind, preparing the mind for higher stages of spiritual progression.

The highest most difficult form of karma yoga is renouncing the sense of doership while performing all actions...realising that one is not the doer but the actionless unchanging witness consciousness that witnesses every action and experience as an object and that prakriti alone is performing all actions through the three modes of material nature satva, rajas and tamas. Gyan yoga enables one to realise that Prakriti alone is acting and performing all actions through the three Gunas. In bhakti yoga this is expressed as being an instrument of the divine will. 

A true seeker must transcend the sense of doership and enjoyership known as kartritva and bhogtritva, knowing oneself to be the eternal unchanging witness consciousness. Prakriti alone acts through the internal gyan indriyas or subtle body and mind and the external karm indriyas or organs of action of the gross physical body. Either through realisation of the true Self through gyan yoga or through complete devotional surrender to the Lord through the dualistic path of bhakti yoga...one ultimately must come to the renunciation of the sense of doership and agency. But ultimate self realisation is attained through gyan yoga that one is the Sakshi or witness consciousness that is none other than the attributeless absolute i.e. Brahman, the vast infinite eternal blissful cosmic consciousness Sat-chit-ananda. This self-realisation or realisation of the real nature of the Self is actually God realisation. One who attains this realisation in their life becomes jeevan mukta or liberated while living...as they have attained the swaroop gyan of the one supreme reality that is our true nature. We are nitya-shuddha-buddha-mukta. We are eternal pure consciouness that is ever free, always unfettered and unbound...bondage is a delusion engendered by the beguiling potency of Maya which creates bondage to the empirical world due to beginningless Avidya or ignorance of our real nature. 

We are none other than Brahman alone. Satyam gyanam anantam Brahman mahantam vibhum advaitam. The vast infinite limitless eternal consciousness that is non dual Brahman...the one reality that appears as multitudinous variegated beings due to the delusive potencies of Maya. 


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