Efficacy of Karma Yoga

Efficacy of Karma Yoga

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Efficacy of Karma Yoga

Let me begin by presenting some statements regarding Karma Yoga:

1. We are told that Karma Yoga includes efficiency in the work that we do. Also, Karma Yoga is

primarily meant for a spiritual goal and not for any other sort of goal. If work-efficiency is indeed

an indispensable part of Karma Yoga, although the goal is not optimum output from the work but

spiritual transformation, will it not make sense to get requisite training in the particular line of

working from experts in that field?

2. Every path of spiritual Sadhana must have a Guru, who initiates the disciple into the secrets of the

path. This initiation generally takes the form of the Guru imparting a mystic mantra or the Guru

guiding the disciple through a series of vows and rituals. Doesn’t Karma Yoga too need a Guru?

In what form does the Guru initiate the disciple along this path?

I mentioned these questions in order to paint a general tapestry of the ignorance and confusion

surrounding Karma Yoga. I shall present you some more ideas which may help in understanding why

these questions arose in the first place.

The present day society has achieved a peculiar level of complexity. All of us have to work.

There is no escape from that. But, most of us attempt to work without any sort of formal training. You

may ask, why is training needed at all? Hasn’t this world gone on fine with the inept kind of working that

people have been doing? But I counter such arguments by pointing out: Wouldn’t the world be a better

place had each worker plunged into the field of work after getting some sort of minimum training? You

may further point out – we are talking of work in general, while you seem to be speaking of some Yoga.

To this I counter – all of us have to work; wouldn’t it be nice if we could just tweak our working mode a

little bit so as to gain a dual benefit?

With each passing day, we find that the idea of Karma Yoga is gaining greater and greater

acceptance among the people all over the world. Certain aspects of the idea of Karma Yoga that is

however gaining ground are not very healthy. Most votaries of Karma Yoga seem to hold that anybody

and everybody can start practicing Karma Yoga. No qualifications are needed. No Guru is needed who

will initiate the votary into the nuances of Karma Yoga. Frequent loss of tempers and generous use of

profanities are justified given the pressure of performing Karma Yoga. As long as we frequently ejaculate

‘It’s all the will of the Lord’, we can just about do anything in the name of Karma Yoga; ends justify the

means as soon as you start practicing Karma Yoga. Honesty need not be strictly adhered to; in fact, it is

not at all possible to adhere to honesty in the work-field; expediency is totally justified as long as we are

performing Karma Yoga. The steep increase of such ideas and persons calls for some clarification.

Karma Yoga has been quite a controversial concept in India. The origin of this Yoga is seen in

one of the oldest Upanishads – Isha Upanishad. This Upanishad has a verse that says:

Kurvanneveha karmani jijeevishet shatam samaha;

Evam tvayi nanyatyetosti na karma lipyate narey.

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This means: Man must aim to live a full life of a hundred years on this earth by continuously

performing his duties allotted to him by his inherent tendencies and the society. Unless you design your

life in such a way, you will never be able to free yourself from the tentacles of activity!

The term ‘Eva Iha Karmani’ was variously interpreted by different schools of philosophers in

India and each school developed its own brand of Karma Yoga. When the Mimamsakas became popular

in the Vedic period, they interpreted this term to mean the innumerable fire-sacrifices mentioned in the

chapters of the Vedas preceding the Upanishads. This made sense. Why do I say this made sense? Based

on this interpretation developed an entire paradigm of economy in the land. Every activity in this land

revolved around the fire-sacrifice. Farming, hunting, agriculture, fishing, mining, manufacturing,

governance, trading, games & sports, music & theatre, folk-arts, teaching and health care all revolved

around the central activity of fire-sacrifice. In short, the entire national economy stood on the fire-

sacrifice1. If any activity could not be integrated with the fire-sacrifice mentioned in the Vedas, that

activity was rejected as non-productive.

The society got stratified into classes. The Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas & Shudras engaged in

activities that were integrated with the fire-sacrifice. The Shudras however performed activities lay in the

outer fringes, activities that basically amounted to cleaning up before and after the fire-sacrifice, but were

still a part of the economy, more like a necessary evil, but necessary nonetheless. The rest of the people

were classified under the classless class called ‘Mlecchas’. Now, the activities of these Mlecchas could

not get integrated under the overall scheme of economy of the land. The ancient Rishis who evolved this

marvelous system in this land had achieved the impossible! They had successfully integrated community

religious activities, economy of the people and social customs & traditions into one compact package,

revolving around the fire-sacrifice! This was the scene during the Vedic period here in the land that was

later on called India.

Then Buddha appeared on the scene. He was an iconoclast in the sense that he undermined the

entire scheme of economy of the land by banning the fire-sacrifice! He was of course justified in doing

so. The scheme, according to the original planners, was that, by thus integrating daily activity with

religion, each person would achieve life fulfilment in the natural course of executing his daily duties, and

simultaneously, society as a whole would achieve social, economic and evolutionary progress. With the

passage of time, however, this grand plan had got jeopardized because one class of people, the Brahmins,

who controlled the fire-sacrifice, started tyrannizing the people, socially and economically. Thus, when

Buddha saw that the scheme, which had started on a most exalted note, had now taken a devilish turn, he

remedied the defect. However, his very act of benevolence destroyed the entire economy of the land. And

further, he did not give an alternate viable economic model to supplant the old one. As a result, his

deprecation of the fire-sacrifice did not gain popular consent in this land, which led to his entire doctrine

being rejected from the land. That is the reason his ideas had to migrate to other lands like China and

Japan, where they survive even to this day. And the Vedic genius swallowed him into its body-politic by

considering him as an Incarnation of the Lord! Imagine the ingenuity of the Vedic Brahmin mind here.

They apotheosized the Buddha; but his entire doctrine was rejected! Nowhere in the Hindu scriptures do

you find any acceptance of his iconoclastic doctrines, but he himself is venerated as an Incarnation of the

1 Of course, there was no nation then; India did not exist then. It was just that the majority of the people living

between the Himalayas and the Euphrates-Tigris Basin and in the Peninsula followed this kind of livelihood. They

had different kings ruling them, but their economy was governed by the fire-sacrifice

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Lord and hence worshipped as a deity! The tremendous force he had unleashed on this society was

converted to iconographic worship and his doctrine was asphyxiated! As a result, the fire-sacrifice again

gained popularity in the post-buddhistic period. Quite often, it resurrected in abominable forms such as

the Tantrik and Kapalika practices.

However, this transformation took some 700 years during which time, there were a couple of

important developments which we shall note here. One of the important developments was that the people

of this land had developed an alternate scheme of livelihood and therefore an alternate economic model

which had done away with the fire-sacrifice. What was that model? It was almost the same as the one that

the people of this land had picked up from the Greeks. The Greeks were basically the ‘Mlecchas2’. These

were people who had tried to conquer this land and had failed, but had successfully rubbed off some of

their life-style onto a people whose own society was in great turmoil of transition. Thus, by 700 AD, the

land had the majority of people following the simplified Greek economic model and a fanatic minority

that was doggedly holding onto the Vedic, Pre-Buddhistic economic model, revolving around the fire-

sacrifice.

Into that social melee came Acharya Shankara. He saw a society that was struggling to reconcile

its past with its present. The people were unable to decide whether they ought to stick to the simplified

Greek economic model where work and commodity was measured in terms of currency, or revert to the

old system, that is the fire-sacrifice model, where work and commodity was measured in terms of the

value it contributed to the fire-sacrifice. The old system was indeed a very compact system, so long as the

society was small and localized. As the human society started expanding, the Vedic model of economy

became more and more complicated, since this model could not accommodate an enlarging society. So,

when Acharya Shankara appeared on the scene, he found that society had some sections that still adhered

to, and propagated the dated fire-sacrifice model of economy; alongside these sections, there were many

who followed a simplistic currency based economy. While the old system of everything revolving around

the fire-sacrifice could no longer be feasible [since the strict stratification of society had already been

fractured in the post-buddhistic period3], Shankara realized one very important point: he realized the

urgent need to bifurcate the economy from the religious practices of the people. This he successfully did

by following a two-pronged approach. On the one hand he systematically decimated the old school of

Vedic fire-sacrifice [and the various new forms it had taken such as the Tantrik schools], and on the other

hand he established the supremacy of his brand of philosophical thought called Advaita Vedanta, which is

built on the main premise that activity and true religion are antithetical to each other.

This achievement of Acharya Shankara produced one incredibly positive result and one extremely

deleterious result for this land. Religion was preserved in its pure form. That was the incredibly positive

result. The best brains of this land had dedicated their life’s energies to discovering the subtle truths of

religion. The later geniuses of this land felt deeply that the common man too must have access to those

emancipating truths of religion. With this impulse, they integrated religion into the daily economy of the

common masses, as we described above. But the Greek influence that impacted this land led to an

unhinging of the economy from the integrated package. Moreover, the grand scheme of life envisaged by

2 The term Mleccha included the Huns, the Tartars, the Mongols, the Ioneans and the Greeks. They also included the

various aborigines of the land who refused to conform to the common social customs & traditions revolving around

the Vedic religion. 3 The Hindu historians call this breaking down of the social stratification as Varna Sankarya.

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the Rishis was jeopardized by the all-too-common tyranny of the Brahmins who actually controlled the

fire-sacrifice. Buddha had been able to see that the scheme which was meant to be for the benefit of the

common man was anything but that in its later form! But in his attempt to throw the bath water, Buddha

threw out the baby too! Luckily, before permanent damage to the body-politic could be done, Acharya

Shankara appeared on the scene. All those wonderful discoveries of religion would have been lost had

Shankara not bifurcated religion from economy.

What about the deleterious consequence of Shankara’s decision to bifurcate religion from

economy? Human activity, human endeavor, work, productive activity – these were looked down upon by

the people ever since religion got divorced from the economic life of people. Religion climbed up to a

pedestal so high that it was out of reach of the common masses. Added to this, the inevitable daily

laboring was seen as serving no purpose, since no matter how much they labored or what kind of labor

they engaged in, it would never lead them to spiritual felicity. It is important to note that the Vedic Rishis

had so carefully integrated religion and economy as to confer spiritual felicity in those that labored in

their station of life. That aspect was now absent. Fine; the people of this land could very well have

rejected religion and taken purely to human activity, just as people in other lands like Europe or Middle

Eastern Asia or South Eastern Asia had done. Well, that just didn’t happen. Why? The only plausible

reason could be as Swami Vivekananda points out: To the other nations of the world, religion is one

among the many occupations of life. There is politics, there are the enjoyments of social life, there is all

that wealth can buy or power can bring, there is all that the senses can enjoy; and among all these

various occupations of life and all this searching after something which can give yet a little more

whetting to the cloyed senses — among all these, there is perhaps a little bit of religion. But here, in

India, religion is the one and the only occupation of life. How many of you know that there has been a

Sino-Japanese War? Very few of you, if any. That there are tremendous political movements and

socialistic movements trying to transform Western society, how many of you know? Very few indeed, if

any. But that there was a Parliament of Religions in America, and that there was a Hindu Sannyâsin sent

over there, I am astonished to find that even the coolie knows of it. That shows the way the wind blows,

where the national life is. I used to read books written by globe-trotting travelers, especially foreigners,

who deplored the ignorance of the Eastern masses, but I found out that it was partly true and at the same

time partly untrue. If you ask a ploughman in England, or America, or France, or Germany to what party

he belongs, he can tell you whether he belongs to the Radicals or the Conservatives, and for whom he is

going to vote. In America he will say whether he is Republican or Democrat, and he even knows

something about the silver question. But if you ask him about his religion, he will tell you that he goes to

church and belongs to a certain denomination. That is all he knows, and he thinks it is sufficient. Here is

the only plausible reason why the common masses simply couldn’t reject religion even when their daily

activities could not be integrated with their religious aspirations; religion was in their genes, so to speak!

Thus, for about a thousand years since Acharya Shankara, the people of this land lived a fractured

life, laboring daily towards a seemingly meaningless goal, but aspiring all along for a spiritual goal that

required them to renounce everything that they held dear and meaningful, a goal that simply couldn’t be

integrated into their daily life at all. This deep dichotomy in the collective psyche of the people of this

land made them weak, purposeless, lacking focus. As a result, any foreign ruler who chose to, could enter

this land, over-run the local army and establish his hegemony over the land and its people. In fact, some

of the rulers who did come here were actually failures in their own land of birth! For instance, Babur; or

even Qutub-ud-din Aibak, who hailed from a slave family in Persia. This land, which was the most

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prosperous land in the entire civilized world, was reduced to abject poverty, what with the people lacking

all initiative to work!

We must note an important point here. You will notice that I have been constantly using the word

‘people of this land’, ‘this land’, etc. instead of directly using the terms ‘country’ or ‘nation’. There is a

reason for this. India did not exist until the British rule got stabilized, sometime around 1890. Right from

the Vedic period up to 1890, this was a group of different kingdoms. The people living between the

Himalayas in the North, the Hindu-Kush in the West, the Brahmaputra on the East and the Indian Ocean

on the South, all had the same culture. That means to say, they had the same religion and social norms.

But they were under different kings. The society was governed by the same laws, but the administrative

control was various. The people certainly felt a social and therefore a cultural & religious kinship, but

they never felt that they were one community. Language, for instance, was a great barrier. When the

British Crown consolidated this entire region under its control, the people living in this region started

getting the first inkling of the nationalistic sense. It was the perception of the British that we were a

nation; it was never a perception of the people living here that we were a nation, to begin with. But, soon,

the idea gained popularity, helped to a large extent by the insensitivity of the British in dealing with the

religion of the people. But the genesis of the idea of nationalism wasn’t enough to rouse the people living

in this land, unless the deep-rooted dichotomy between daily activity and their spiritual aspirations could

not be reconciled.

We have painted quite a detailed picture of the history of this land and its people up until the

1850s. Let me now describe to you a development that has great bearing on the main topic of this essay.

Sometime around 1850, at Dakshineswar near Calcutta, a rich dowager named Rani Rashmoni

built a magnificent temple for the Divine Mother. After some hitches, this new temple got a new priest

called Ramakrishna. Actually, he and his elder brother managed the daily worship of the various temples

in the huge Dakshineswar complex. The young man Ramakrishna did not have much academic learning,

which is actually associated with priesthood in this land. We must remember that this priest class is the

modern form of the Brahmin who was the tyrannical custodian of the fire-sacrifice during the Buddhistic

Era. So, this young man, rustic in the sense he lacked the refinement that accompanies systematic

academic education, however had a specialty in him. He had the exuberance of life, what is called joie de

vivre, by the French writers. Like most youths, he too was extremely idealistic, with great spiritual

aspirations. At the same time, the compulsions of daily life drove him to work in the Dakshineswar

Temple, worshipping a Deity that was literally terrifying by any standards. Now, what I wish to point out

here is this – this combination in this youth was nothing new. For centuries, such had been the fate of

innumerable Brahmin youths in India. However, Sri Ramakrishna did not remain satisfied with living a

lie. He achieved a tremendous integration in his personal life. He very successfully integrated his spiritual

aspirations with his daily allotted work, work that he was compelled to do in order to feed himself, work

that was considered as drudge for the last many centuries in this land, ever since Buddha and Shankara

bifurcated religion from the economy of daily life! He achieved such an unprecedented self-integration

that he started evolving as a sort of voice of the entire suffering mankind of this age. Circumstances

conjured in such fortuitous ways that he got a disciple named Narendranath. This youth was an opposite

of sorts to Sri Ramakrishna, in the sense that he had very high academic qualifications and hailed from a

very highly cultured family from the metropolis of that time – Calcutta.

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Sri Ramakrishna claimed that he was an Incarnation of God. This term ‘Avatara’ or ‘Incarnation’

is a technical term used in Hindu religious jargon to mean the flesh & blood manifestation of the Lord

who created and sustains this entire universe. The term God means that – creator and sustainer of this

world and also much more beyond that idea to the Hindus. The term also means the underlying principle

of consciousness in everything that exists. That is also meant by the term God. So, Ramakrishna claimed

that he was an Incarnation of that God. Apart from these ideas, there is one other idea that is encompassed

under this term and that is the idea of power. God is power. What power? Although it includes all the

various forms that power can be perceived as, it basically refers to the power that controls our lives. Ideas

have power. Words have power. Actions have power. When a Hindu uses the term God, he means this

power that is inherent in all ideas, words and actions, too. Ramakrishna claimed that he was an

Incarnation of God in this sense too. Now, for the subject that we are dealing with here, the efficacy of

Karma Yoga, this particular aspect of Sri Ramakrishna [where he claimed himself to be an Avatara of

God] is a non-issue. the reason I brought it up here is – this sense of Avatarahood that he developed about

himself led to a very wonderful development.

He did a very strange thing towards the end of his life. In Cossipore, which is in sub-urban

Calcutta, while he was almost dying, he called Narendranath near him and exhorted him that he [i.e.

Narendranath] should do something for the spiritual emancipation of the common masses. There was

something inexplicable in that order. For, this exhortation drove the young man, who was strictly

speaking a skeptic as regards Avatarahood and the need for spiritual emancipation of the masses, to great

lengths in discovering a suitable means for spiritual emancipation of the masses.

Although there are not many details of the inner workings of the mind of this young man [who

later became the renowned Swami Vivekananda], based on his letters to his disciples and colleagues, his

own recorded lectures and his official biography, I have tried to roughly reconstruct the mentations that

led him to design the path of Karma Yoga4. For, he held that Karma Yoga would be the path for the

spiritual emancipation of the people now.

Swami Vivekananda clearly understood the historical developments of the Indians5. So, he

arrived at the conclusion that the task before him was two-fold: One, to maintain the purity of the religion

that took birth in India. Two, to find some means of integrating religion with the daily life of common

man, so that he could once again have the wherewithal to achieve spiritual goals by means of executing

his daily duties. Sister Nivedita, one of his biographers points out very forcefully that he arrived at this

conclusion based on inputs from three different sources. She writes, and I quote in-extenso: The formative

influence that went to the determining of his vision may perhaps be regarded as threefold. There was,

first, his literary education, in Sanskrit and English. The contrast between the two worlds thus opened to

him carried with it a strong impression of that particular experience which formed the theme of the

Indian sacred books. It was evident that this, if true at all, had not been stumbled upon by Indian sages,

4 It would be worthwhile to mention here that Swami Ashokananda has written an editorial in Prabuddha Bharata

with the title Origin of Swami Vivekananda’s doctrine of service. This article is available on the internet as also in

the book Ascent to spiritual illumination. In this article, he has elaborated that Swami Vivekananda had to arrive at

this doctrine of Service [which is a special form of Karma Yoga] in order to give a comprehensive shape to the

spiritual discoveries of Sri Ramakrishna. 5 In fact, the historical developments & background that I have mentioned above are all culled from his Complete

Works, published by Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata.

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as by some others, in a kind of accident. Rather was it the subject-matter of a science, the object of a

logical analysis that shrank from no sacrifice which the pursuit of truth demanded.

In his Master, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, living and teaching in the temple-garden at

Dakshineshwar, the Swami Vivekananda — "Naren" as he then was — found that verification of the

ancient texts which his heart and his reason had demanded. Here was the reality which the books only

brokenly described. Here was one to whom Samâdhi was a constant mode of knowledge. Every hour saw

the swing of the mind from the many to the One. Every moment heard the utterance of wisdom gathered

superconsciously. Everyone about him caught the vision of the divine. Upon the disciple came the desire

for supreme knowledge "as if it had been a fever". Yet he who was thus the living embodiment of the

books was so unconsciously, for he had read none of them! In his Guru, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa,

Vivekananda found the key to life.

Even now, however, the preparation for his own task was not complete. He had yet to wander

throughout the length and breadth of India, from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, mixing with saints and

scholars and simple souls alike, learning from all, teaching to all, and living with all, seeing India as she

was and is, and so grasping in its comprehensiveness that vast whole, of which his Master's life and

personality had been a brief and intense epitome.

These, then — the Shâstras, the Guru, and the Mother-land — are the three notes that mingle

themselves to form the music of the works of Vivekananda. These are the treasure which it is his to offer.

These furnish him with the ingredients whereof he compounds the world's heal-all of his spiritual bounty.

These are the three lights burning within that single lamp which India by his hand lighted and set up, for

the guidance of her own children and of the world in the few years of work between September 19, 1893

and July 4, 19026.

In his attempt to open up a path for everyone to participate in the life-fulfilling spiritual journey,

Swami Vivekananda first attempted to introduce Raja Yoga [the science of religion] among the masses.

This would have ensured the first objective mentioned above – that of maintaining the purity of religion7.

It would have however left the second objective unaddressed.

So, finally, Swami Vivekananda came up with a marvelous plan of action: He established the

Ramakrishna Math, an organization of monks, to achieve the first objective, of maintaining the purity of

religion. Then he established the Ramakrishna Mission, an organization of monks and non-monastic

members of the society, with the directive that this organization would engage in vigorous activity along

the lines of Karma Yoga. For, in his later, matured point of view, it was Karma Yoga that would be the

path meant for the common man, which would fulfil the needs of the modern man. Why would that be so?

For, hadn’t his master Sri Ramakrishna achieved everything merely by the conscientious performance of

his daily duties as a priest?

This latter organization is meant to be a torch-bearer to everyone in society who is desirous of

practicing Karma Yoga. People can come to the various centers of this organization and study how the

monks and the other members work. For, the work that is done in this organization is a special kind of

6 This is a part of the Introduction to the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda.

7 Please refer http://www.scribd.com/doc/83776171/Swami-Vivekananda-and-Pavhari-Baba, for a detailed article on

this topic.

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work. All the work is done as Karma Yoga and not as a drudge, or even as duty. Swami Vivekananda

specified very clearly that this organization would engage in all sorts of socially productive activity, and

that every activity would serve a dual purpose – while the activities would enhance the collective welfare,

it would also enhance the spiritual growth of the individuals who are engaged in those activities.

In this organization one finds two kinds of workers. One set of workers are visible; their activities

are directly producing benefit to the people at large and to the target audience of those activities in

particular. Even though there is great visibility and lot of fanfaronade in their activities, this category of

workers maintain a clear sense of divinity within them in all that they do. They know with certainty that

they are divine, the people they serve are divine and the act of service they render is actually a worship of

the divine by the divine. The other set of workers are invisible, behind the screen, so to speak. This latter

category of workers goes on performing their daily allotted duties with a sense of sacrilization. The

common aspect in both these kinds of workers is the deep sense of divinization of the whole act. Years

upon years of performing their duties in this sense leads to an incredible transformation in their

consciousness that is not different from the transformation that would occur by practice of meditation or

practice of devotion.

It is this particular way of working that Swami Vivekananda wanted to popularize among the

masses. The exact type of work doesn’t matter. It is the way in which it is performed that matters. When

done in the right way, every work that we do can become a valid path for our spiritual transformation.

Hence, Swami Vivekananda gave a wonderful solution to the dilemma that has been tormenting the

Indian psyche for the last two thousand years! So, welcome all sorts of activities. Welcome all means of

wealth generation. For, activity and wealth generation are no longer antithetical to spiritual development.

Rather, activity and wealth generation can themselves become the emancipating paths, if done as Karma

Yoga.

So powerful has been this solution that within fifty years of Swami Vivekananda’s enunciation of

this panacea, incredible results ensued. Mass acceptance of this message first of all took shape in the form

of an upsurge in nationalistic feeling in India. For the first time, the masses felt that feeling for the entire

country, feeling for his/her own fellow countryman, and working to free one’s own nation from foreign

domination was at the same time bounden duty and also a valid path for one’s own spiritual development.

After political independence, the same acceptance of this message by the masses took shape in the form

of the birth and rise of a middle class in this country.

What concerns me, however, is that at present, everyone I come across claims to be performing

Karma Yoga; but I have difficulty when I am unable to perceive the resultant transformation in his/her

personality! Karma Yoga is a scheme of spiritual practices. While all other schemes of spiritual practices

enjoin that only particular types of activities ought to be performed as a means to one’s spiritual

development, Karma Yoga claims that the type of activity is immaterial. As opposed to the other

traditional schools, although Karma Yoga claims that any activity can be a valid means of one’s spiritual

development, it does enjoin that there is a limitation on the way in which any activity can be performed.

Further, Karma Yoga very clearly specifies that one needs a certain qualification before one can embark

on practicing Karma Yoga.

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Swami Vivekananda has elaborated on both these points in his small book titled ‘Karma Yoga’.

He has elaborated the qualifications one needs to possess before one can start practicing Karma Yoga. He

has also explained the way, the method of performing any activity, by which that activity can get

metamorphosed into Yoga8. What is of great importance is that there are clear milestones along the path

that indicate we are on the right path. I note below a few of those milestones for reference of genuine

aspirants of Karma Yoga9:

As soon as a particular activity is over and before another activity is taken up, in the

interim period, the mind gets filled with divine thoughts.

The frequency of the spontaneous rising of divine thoughts will increase.

Anger and jealousy will reduce. One becomes more firm but compassionate too.

The center of one’s consciousness starts shifting to within our own personality.

A zone of silence is created inside our self and it keeps on growing, encompassing wider

and wider circles of our personality.

The sense of compulsion associated with duty reduces. Every act is seen progressively as

an opportunity for self-expression. Slowly this self-expression tends towards a sense of

worshipful offering to the divinity within us.

Our ability to digest failure increases steadily. The effort we put into any activity doesn’t

get affected by the success or failure of the activity anymore.

Our ability to digest criticism and negative comments increases steadily. It is not that our

sensitivity reduces or that we become numb to words; on the contrary, our sensitivity

towards the effects that words can produce gets enhanced considerably. What happens is

that we will steadily develop an ability to sympathize with the troubled, unbalanced state

of mind that produced those harsh, hurtful words. Hence, instead of resenting the speaker,

we sympathize with him/her.

The senses become extremely vivid. This happens in the beginning for a certain period of

time. Later on, this vividness shifts its focus from the perceptions of the senses to the

ideas in the mind. Further on, all that we see and hear and do will be seen as a metaphor

of our conception of divinity.

We become merciless to ourselves regarding our short-comings. At the same time, we

become kind towards others regarding their short-comings. Certain cases may require that

we specifically point out and correct short-comings of others; in such cases, we start

feeling a clear at-one-ment with the persons whom we are called upon to correct. Each

act of such correction emanates from a vivid picture of perfection in the other person’s

personality.

A sense of spontaneous joy flows in the self. This tends to have a highly concentrating

effect on the mind, and if not consciously controlled, could be highly distracting from the

job at hand.

8 Please refer http://www.scribd.com/doc/195501244/Swami-Vivekananda-s-Karma-Yoga-The-Scripture-for-

Modern-Mankind for a detailed explanation of these & related issues. 9

I collected these from various sources. Some are from Meditation & Spiritual Life by Swami Yatishwaranandaji.

Some others are from my discussions with some senior monks of our Order.

Efficacy of Karma Yoga

Page 10 of 10

Thus, while I heartily recommend the widespread acceptance of Karma Yoga at all levels of

society, I really wish that people who start practicing Karma Yoga would care to go about it in a

systematic manner, and not drag down the high ideal.

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