by Sri Bmal Mohanty
VOL No. 23
Oct. 2002

PREPARATIONS FOR SADHANA -Part 4

"Based on the lectures by Sri Bimal Mohanty"

If you even can not keep on your practice, think that all actions are to be done for my sake and you will attain your goal. Just convince yourself that you are working for The Lord and you will reach fulfillment.

When He says this, here we find some ray of hope for those people who are in the initial stages of their spiritual sadhana and find it difficult to concentrate straightaway on matters of abstract meditation. Directing the mind could be extremely exasperating but directing one's actions perhaps could be easier.

The Lord says if you find it so difficult, simply make me responsible for all your work. Whatever you do, do it as if, you are doing it for my sake alone.

Here the basic concept of our spiritual philosophy, which we have discussed so elaborately in the beginning, comes to our help. All that goes on in this creation is indeed the work of The Lord. The role of human beings as we have discussed earlier, is only that of a tool, a nimitta, through which The Lord gets the ordained tasks performed. He is the ultimate doer the real kartapurush. Therefore doing all work for His sake alone is logically correct. Realising this, one simply surrenders all activities in the name of The Lord, sacrificing the feeling that your actions could be different or something outside this grand cosmic enterprise.

So as a first step to total surrender, what is being talked here is the surrender of one's activity, one's worklife, to begin with. This is indeed the advice which is good for all of us to follow. This is an advice which is given by most of our sastras which is, 'dedicate your worklife to The Lord'.

Sri Aurobindo explains it more lucidly in his "Self surrender in works - The way of The Gita". He says "Our purpose in Yoga is to .... enthrone God ... As the ruling inhabitant of the nature..There must be implanted and activised in all are doings a supreme, impersonal, unfaltering and unstumbling will in .. unison with the will of The Divine.

He is talking here of putting The Lord on the throne from where all commandments and directives flow. Allowing Him to rule and assume all responsibility. His will has to override on any trace of ahamkara or agency of individual ego-self. The self agency has to become subservient to the divine agency.

He further goes on to explain "A hidden power is the true Lord and overruling observer of our acts and only He knows through all the ignorance and perversion and deformation brought in by the ego their entire sense and ultimate purpose... The greater will must be made conscious in us and master..."

As we can see, here two things need to be understood well. When individual ego takes the role of doer on its own, the results are likely to be perverted and deformed. That is because the individual is not in possession of all the knowledge to determine which action is absolutely right and which has hidden dangers within it. Therefore it is HE, who knows everything, who should be made to overrule.

All actions must be done in more and more God oriented and finally in God possessed consciousness. "One must make God-Love and God-Service our only motive"

This has various practical advantages.

When you think that you are the doer yourself and master of all your activities, then it is quite natural that since you can not have all the interrelated information at your disposal and the final outcome does not work out to your liking, you are bound to feel miserable. You will not understand why inspite of your best efforts the results did not come the way you wanted. The next would be a sense of frustration and anger. Anger is described as a temporary loss of sanity and an insane man loses all control and adds further misery to himself.

Our shastras say that instead of looking at yourself as the doer, one should understand who actually is the doer and knowing that the Divine hand performs all, one should let one's ego surrender to this divine will.

How will that help? Are we talking of simply passing the buck? On the contrary, knowing that all activities take place following a natural divine law and nothing happens in an adhoc manner we try to reason things out. We know and believe that the universal law or The Lord's actions are scrupulously fair and is always for the good of all. Whenever something unpleasant happens- once we believe that there is God's hand hidden behind it - the mind instead of revolting starts reasoning out. There could be an initial resentment but ultimately when the dialogue with your own conscience begins, the reason invariably takes over. This is because, whatever one may say or argue with the outside world, the dialogue with one's own conscience is always based on truth. No body can ever cheat one's own conscience.


Under such a situation, there is serious introspection, inward thinking. You start asking yourself, if such a thing has happened to me, what is the hidden message God wants to convey to me? Where did I go wrong to be in this predicament? Answers to such questions sooner or later reveal before us. There is no better lesson available for improving one's own character and one's future actions.

There is another practical advantage in dedicating all work to The Lord. If I could keep always in my mind that all the activities that I perform are ultimately my offerings to The Lord, would it ever be possible to do a vile deed in the name of God? How many of us would steal in the name of God? How many of us would perpetuate crime in the name of God? How many of us would cheat in the name of God? Some people ofcourse with demoniacal qualities (asuri prvrtti) do such acts. But they also eventually degrade themselves and mar their future lives by doing so. But those who are possessed with any amount of divine consciousness would still refrain from doing so. They do this because, when you do all actions as an offering you will hesitate to offer anything that is wrong. A mother who cooks for her child would she ever spoil the food knowing that she would offer this to her beloved child? In the story of Ramayana the tribal woman could not think of offering a rotten fruit to Lord Rama. She tasted each one herself before offering. The conscience always acts as a deterrent.

Once such feelings become stronger and stronger, the true meaning of God-human relationship becomes clearer and clearer. The God-human bond becomes stronger and stronger. One starts finding the advantage of the ego-self coming in conformity with the Divine and Superior will. Then total surrender happens.

Therefore the way to surrender to Him is to surrender our actions to Him.

Always remember:

Yat karomi tabarthaya atma samarpanaya ca

Whatever are my actions are for your sake only. That will lead me to total surrender,

Once we do that we have this great assurance from none else but The Lord Himself

Sarva karmany api sada kurvanah madvyapasrayah

Mad prasadat avapnoti sasvatam padam avyayam

Who continuously does all actions dedicated to me, reaches the eternal permanent goal with my grace.

Interestingly, in Srimad Bhagavad Gita, as you must have noticed, every utterance of The Lord is a mahavakya - a final say and is not repeated again. However there are some concepts which are so important that The Lord does repeat them in some other context. This is rare yet as if The Lord knows the inherent limitations of the human mind and is not tired of saying it over again. This concept of self surrender through your day to day actions is indeed one such. So He goes on to remind us:

Ye tu sarvaani karmaani mayi sanyasya matparaah

Ananyena eva yogena maam dhyaayanta upaasate

Tesaamaham samuddhartaa mrtyu sansaara saagaraat

Bhavaami naciraat paartha mayi aavesita cetasaam.

Those who worship me by surrendering all their actions to me as their final destination and unflinching thoughts on me, soon have me as their deliverer from this sea of mortal world.

So the very goal of sadhana is assured. We surrender through our works. Once we have surrendered then our very sadhana is in the hands of The Lord.

Leaving your sadhana in the hands of the Lord is both powerfully effective and an act of great reverence. All great sadhaks and saints believe that one's sadhana can only succeed not merely by one's own efforts but essentially by the grace of the Lord. Without the very grace of the Lord you can not have liberation.

Here lies another deep philosophical concept inherent in self surrender.

We are now talking of the final step of sadhana, after the sadhaka has gone through all stages of ascent.

Let us understand it from another angle.

We may recall that we talked about two concepts often connected with sadhana. Jnana Labha- or acquring of knowledge, and Siddhi Labha or acquring the state of Bramha realisation. As we know, a knowledgeable person or jnani is not necessarily a realised person or a siddha. While knowledge is an enabling strength, siddhi is an experience. Jnana takes you to the gate of siddhi or realisation. But for the gate to open and your being welcome to the promised kingdom of eternal bliss or the realm of Bramhan consciousness, there is required something else.

Jnanalabha or knowledge acquiring is the completion of the first stage of the movement of sadhana. It marks the conscious acceptance of the existence of that supreme entity The Bramhan. At this point, there lies in front of the jiva - individual soul- that great promise of unlimited bliss or The Satchidananada, the truth, its realisation and the ensuing bliss, but yet, the jiva is still not quite there.

That momentus transformation does not occur, or can not be achieved, unless the grace of the Lord is upon us. The crossing over of the chasm only occurs when He extends His hand and holds yours.