LIGHT ON THE PATH - 31 : KILL OUT AMBITION - 10

🌹 LIGHT ON THE PATH - 31 🌹

🍀 For those WHO DESIRE TO ENTER WITHIN - For DISCIPLES 🍀

✍️. ANNIE BESANT and LEADBEATER
📚. Prasad Bharadwaj

CHAPTER 3 - THE FIRST RULE

🌻 KILL OUT AMBITION - 10 🌻

33. In his present state the man is a worthless creature in the world, useless to himself and everybody else. Before he reached this condition he was a force that helped the general evolution of the world, because he was affected by those things which attract normal men and enable them to evolve.

Into this condition of perfect collapse and uselessness into which he has been plunged by the loss of ordinary lower motives, there comes a special appeal – an appeal which meets him on the three points where he had lost his motive.

134. It is to the man in this condition that the command comes: “Work as those work who are ambitious.” That is joined to the first teaching: “Kill out ambition,” that taken alone would lead to lethargy.

The separated self being killed, the man has now no motive for work, so the cry comes: “Work as those work who are ambitious.”

Then comes the second command: “Respect life as those do who desire it,” and the third: “Be happy as those who live for happiness.” These are the three new commands that are to begin the new life, the three new motives that replace the three old ones. The man is lying there as dead.

The life of the form is dead. Now he has to waken up the life of the consciousness; that will be done by these three appeals. He has to begin to work again, but now it must be the spiritual man who lives and works, while the personality acts like a machine. He has to live more than ever he did before, though the desires for life, happiness and power have all been extinguished. This is the answer to his question: “Why should I work?”

135. If a man does not find the answer, he will remain in the dead condition and will grow no further. It is the point known to students of mechanics as a dead point, the point of equilibrium, in which there is no force to push him on; the higher forces have counterbalanced the lower ones and destroyed his former selfishness and ambition, but are not yet strong enough in him to send him forth full of energy and purpose in their cause.

That equilibrium is not the object of evolution. What new motives can be put before the man so as to arouse him from this state and make him active? There is only one which can stir the soul from within – his identifying himself with the life of Ishvara in the world, and acting as a part of that life instead of with the desire for the fruit of action.

136. There is no better commentary on this sentence than that which you will find in the third discourse of the Bhagavad-Gita, where reasons are given why a man should work after he has lost the common motives, the desire for the fruits of action:

137. But the man who rejoiceth in the Self, with the Self is satisfied, and is content in the Self, for him verily there is nothing to do;

138. For him there is no interest in things done in this world, nor any in things not done, nor doth any object of his depend on any being.

139. Therefore, without attachment, constantly perform action which is duty, for, by performing action without attachment, man verily reacheth the Supreme.

140. Janaka and others indeed attained to perfection by action: then having an eye to the welfare of the world also, thou shouldst perform action.

Continues...

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17 Nov 2020