Audience: Should the practice of karma yoga always take priority over pranayama and asanas?
Swamiji: While I am practising intense pranayama along with meditation I am disturbed by a desperate cry of: “Help! Help! Help!” Am I going to pretend I didn’t hear? Am I going to pretend it’s not my problem? Am I going to say leave me alone, I’m practising? Am I going to ignore the cry and say “Lord, you help them?” What is the purpose of pranayama? What is the purpose of meditation? It doesn’t matter what sadhana you do: asana, pranayama, meditation, japa, etc. What is the purpose of all of these?
Audience: To give you energy so that you can serve. To utilize that energy for appropriate and needful purposes.
Audience: To attain yoga.
Audience: To get closer to God.
Audience: To become enlightened.
Audience: To purify the mind so you can attain the goal.
Audience: To perform any need that is around.
Audience: To destroy your ego.
Audience: Learning to give.
Swamiji: Yoga is uniting with all. There is no individual self. There is only one Self, one God. I and my Father are One. I am in you. You are in me. I am He. Who said that?
Audience: Jesus.
Swamiji: Yes, Jesus taught the same as Eastern philosophy. Instead of repeating, I and my Father are One, we say Aham Brahmasmi. That person calling for help is me, my own Self. If I just go on with my pranayama, then I am not identifying with that person. I am not seeing that we are One.
I’ll give you an example. I have two hands and ten fingers. Which hand do I use more? I’m right-handed. The right hand of course. I love my right hand much more than my left. Not only that, but my right hand is always angry with the left. It says, “You’re lazy, stupid. I do all the work. You hardly do anything.” The right hand is constantly fighting with the left because the left hand is lazy. Now, suddenly the right hand is injured. The left is happy. It thinks, “Ah, you stupid. You always scolded me. Now I’m glad this has happened to you.” Is this what the left hand will say? No. What will the left hand do now that the right is injured? It will help to bandage the right hand and then take over the right hand’s work. Now that the right hand is not working, automatically the left hand will perform all of the duties of the right hand. Even though it cannot do so as efficiently as the right hand, it will still do them. Or, will it keep quiet, saying that it’s not its job? No, because it has to survive. The left hand’s survival depends on the survival of the whole body. In reality, there is no difference between the right and left hand. Neither hand gets credit afterwards for doing a great job. The right hand does not send a message: “Thank you left hand, at last you are doing a good thing for me.” They don’t send get well cards or thank you cards to each other!!
Likewise in our lives prejudices like: “I am different from you, because you’re English and I’m Indian;” or “You’re Catholic and I’m Protestant;” or “You’re a Muslim and I’m a Jew;” or, “You’re white and I’m black” are distinctions existing only in your mind. Until you remove these distinctions there will be no unity. To cultivate this experience of oneness is called yoga. The purpose of life is to understand this principle of unity.
So the question is: Should karma yoga always take priority? I’m doing pranayama with the right hand. Someone spills boiling water on the left hand and it is burned. What is the priority now? Do I continue with my pranayama or do I have to take care of the left hand? Can you imagine the right hand saying, “Sorry I’m busy with pranayama,” and letting the left hand suffer? Who will take care of the burnt hand? Do you see? Think along these lines.
Karma yoga is not just working. Work is worship. Dedicate it to God. This does not mean that you must work all the time. A bulldozer also works. A bulldozer does more work in less time without expecting anything in return. A bulldozer is a very good karma yogi. What does a bulldozer get for its work? Oil and lubrication and some gas—that’s all. It will not get liberation. So also with a donkey. A donkey serves. A donkey carries dirty clothes to be washed in the river in the morning and carries them back home at night. What does the donkey get for its service? It will get a carrot and possibly a few cashews once a year. Otherwise, just hay and oats. Or, if there are no hay and oats, it must eat wherever it can find grass. Even after eating grass from the roadside, it still serves its master. Will the donkey get liberation? No, of course not. Karma yoga is not simply doing actions. It is removing the idea of agency, the thought, “I am the doer.” That must go. You are not the doer. Within all action, there is infinite power, God’s power. Karma yoga removes the egoism, the idea that I am the doer. Someone calling “Help, help, help” is only God calling to test you. By doing merely asana and pranayama, you’ll only build up your ego.
I’ll tell you another story. A young man spent twenty years practising pranayama in the forest. His kundalini was beginning to rise; he had developed tremendous psychic powers. One day he was practising. A bird came onto a tree branch above him and let his droppings fall straight onto the top of the yogi’s head, onto his sahasrara. The young man glared up at the creature; the stupid bird had no respect for this great yogi, who had been raising his kundalini for over 20 years!! As he stared hard at the bird, the power of his energy burnt it to ashes. He was amazed by his power. “You won’t do that again” he thought with anger, and some satisfaction. A little later hunger sent him begging into the local village for food. He repeated the mantra Om Narayana Hari. When you hear this mantra, Narayana Hari, it means that someone is hungry, that a holy man is waiting for food. A householder is being called to bring some food. Sometimes you get food, sometimes you’re scolded, depending on the householder.
The yogi approached one particular house. Remember he was a great yogi, practising for twenty years now. He called out Narayana Hari, Narayana Hari. In a back room of the house was a simple housewife who was taking care of her invalid husband, giving him a bath. Though it is the duty of a householder to feed a holy man, the housewife called out from inside, “Oh holy man, please wait, I’ll be with you as soon as I finish helping my husband.” She did not want to offend him, but she could not leave her helpless husband.
At this, the yogi became angry. How dare she make a holy man like me wait, he thought to himself. I just burned a bird up with my yogic powers, she obviously doesn’t have an idea of my greatness. As he was fuming outside the door, the housewife called out again from inside the house, “Oh holy man, I’m not like the bird you just burned up in the forest. Don’t think you can burn me up, too.” The yogi was shocked. How on earth does she know about what I did in the forest, he asked himself. Now it was his ego that was a little bit burnt. When he settled down a little, he realised that he had come across a great yogi who could read his thoughts. What kind of yoga was she practising? How could she know what he had done and what he was thinking? While he patiently waited, she finished her duties to her husband. Finally when she appeared with some food for him, the holy man asked her how she knew about the bird. There was no way anyone could have seen him. How could she have known.
Gently ignoring the yogi’s questions, the housewife replied, “Oh, I don’t know. Go to the next village where there is a butcher waiting. Please go and ask him. He will tell you.” How could a butcher know about this now? He went to the next village to find out, and as soon as he arrived, he saw that the butcher was a young man who was taking care of his elderly father. Though the young butcher was busy caring for his father, the yogi called out to him, “Narayana Hari.” The man responded calmly, “Holy man, just wait a few minutes and I’ll be with you. I know that you have been sent by the housewife. She gave you instructions to contact me, is it not?” Of course in those days there was no telephone. “Oh my God, how do you know? How did you communicate so fast? I just left that lady and came straight here, and now you already have the message. How did you find out? That lady knew everything about me and you also know. What type of yoga are you practising?”
“I don’t do any practice. I just do my duty. Early in the morning, I get up. I take my father out. I am the only person who has to care for him. He’s an invalid. So I must care for him before I come here to my job. Then in the evening, I return home again to take care of him. That woman you met is just an ordinary housewife. She must take care of her husband with the same devotion I use for my father. You must also have devotion to do your pranayama. The same devotion you give to your pranayama, I offer as worship to my father, and she gives also to her husband. In that way we purify our hearts. She doesn’t just see a man with ulcer and disease. Within his sick body, covered with sores, the same divinity shines; and she serves him with all her heart and love. So also, I don’t see my father as just a human being. The same Self is shining in him, so I serve Him, who has come to me through my father. In this way our hearts are purified, and we can see everything that is happening without doing asana and pranayama.”
What is the lesson the yogi learnt? Mere asana and pranayama cannot destroy ego and anger. Though he had control over certain psychic forces, the yogi had no control over his own anger. Do you understand? So when you serve, you have to serve in every condition, all types of people. Then will you see whether you are improving or not.
When I did pranayama for several years (in Uttarkashi), my next-door neighbour was another swami living in a cave. If anyone would take water from him, he would get so angry. He would scold you left and right. When you have taken up solitude and pranayama for years in seclusion, you have no way of knowing whether your mind has purified or not. Only when a test comes will you know. In karma yoga, you have to work with and serve any and every type of person—good and bad—and people who may not like you. People will scold you but still you must see the same God in them. Do you understand the strength of mind you must have? It’s not easy. Every day you are thrown into the fire, and each time you must try to come out successfully with an “Oh, thank God, I passed another test.”