Our duty to others means helping
others; doing good to the world. Why should we do good to the world? Apparently
to help the world, but really to help ourselves. We should always try to help
the world, that should be the highest motive in us; but if we consider well, we
find that the world does not require our help at all. This world was not made
that you or I should come and help it. I once read a sermon in which it was
said, “All this beautiful world is very good, because it gives us time and
opportunity to help others.” Apparently, this is a very beautiful sentiment,
but is it not a blasphemy to say that the world needs our help? We cannot deny
that there is much misery in it; to go out and help others is, therefore the
best thing we can do, although in the long run, we shall find that helping
others is only helping ourselves.
Yet we must do good; the
desire to do good is the highest motive power we have, if we know all the time
that it is a privilege to help others. Do not stand on a high pedestal and take
five cents in your hand and say, “Here, my poor man,” but be grateful that the
poor man is there, so that by making a gift to him you are able to help yourself.
It is not the receiver that is blessed, but it is the hiver. Be thankful that
you are allowed to exercise your power of benevolence and mercy in the world,
and thus become pure and perfect.
We become forgetful of the
ego when we think of the body as dedicated to the service of others the body
with which most complacently we identify the ego. And in the long run comes the
consciousness of disembodiedness. The more intently you think of the well-being
of others, the more oblivious of self you become. In this way, as gradually
your heart gets purified by work, you will come to feel the truth that your own
Self is pervading all beings and all things. Thus it is that doing good to
others constitutes a way, a means of revealing one’s own Self or Atman. Know
this also to be one of the spiritual practices, a discipline for
God-realisation. Its aim also is Self-realisation.
When you give something to
a man and expect nothing-do not even expect the man to be grateful-his
ingratitude will not tell upon you, because you never expected anything, never
thought you had any right to anything in the way of a return. You gave him what
he deserved; his own Karma got it for him; your Karma made you the carrier
thereof. Why should you be proud of having given away something? You are the
porter that carried the money or other kind of gift, and the world deserved it
by its own Karma. Where is then the reason for pride in you? There is nothing
very great in what you give to the world.
Ask nothing; want nothing
in return. Give what you have to give; it will come back to you-but do not
think of that now, it will come back multiplied a thousand fold but the
attention must not be on that. Yet have to power to give; give, and there it
ends. Learn that the whole of life is giving, that nature will force you to
give. So, give willingly. Sooner or later you will have to give up. You come
into life to accumulate. With clenched hands, you want to take. But nature puts
a hand on your throat and makes your hands open. Whether you will it nr not,
you have to give. The moment you say, “I will not”, the blow comes; you are
hurt. None is there but will be compelled in the long run, to hive up
everything. And the more one struggles against this law, the more miserable one
feels. It is because we dare not give, because we are not resigned enough to
accede to this grand demand of nature, that we are miserable. The forest is
gone, but we get heat in return. The sun is taking up water from the ocean, to
return it in showers. You are a machine for taking and giving: you take, in
order to give. Ask, therefore, nothing in return; but the more you give, the
more will come to you. The quicker you can empty the air out of this room, the
quicker it will be filled up by the external air; and if you close all the
doors and every aperture, that which is outside will remain, but that which is
outside will never come in, and that which is within will stagnate, degenerate,
and become poisoned. A river is continually emptying itself into the ocean and
is continually filling up again. Bar not the exit into the ocean. The moment
you do that, death seizes you.
Wisdom, knowledge, wealth,
men, strength, prowess, and whatever else nature gathers and provides us with,
are all only for diffusion, when the moment of need is at hand. We often forget
this fact, put the stamp of “mine only” upon the entrusted deposits, and Pari
passu, we sow the seed of our own ruin!
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