Re-define your life

Believe in ghosts? then you may find this article interesting.

No doubt i personally believe in existence of something after death. So its really makes me interested to read and write about these topics.

There are very popular stories and facts about Haunted houses in Kolkata and surroundings which can be found in books and movies. But beyond this there are direct experiences by common people wh9ch might not got published in books. Here are some about Kolkata Haunted Houses:

1.Haunted house stumps rationalists

7 Dec 2007, 0256 hrs IST, Pinaki Das, TNN
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Kolkata/%20Haunted_house_stumps_rationalists/articleshow/2602627.cms

HOWRAH: Strange apparitions moving across rooms, a trail of water on the floor, beds and pillows getting wet — horror movie freaks may think
this to be the plot of the next Ramsay Brothers’ venture.

However, this is little joy for the residents of a century-old building at Santragachhi, where these ‘sightings’ are taking place. The house has already acquired the unenviable title of Bhoot Bungalow.

Siddhartha Banerjee and his family have occupied this century-old house at GIP Colony for nearly five decades now. While Banerjee stays on the ground floor, his sister stays in the rooms above.

It all started 13 days ago when family members found water on the floors where none had been spilled. Even beds and mattresses were moist. Banerjee’s daughter Varsha complained of seeing shadows moving across rooms.

As the news spread, a Paschim Banga Vigyan Mancha team visited the house on Thursday. They reasoned that the floor and beds are being wetted by animals. The family has a pet dog. A number of cats also haunt the house. The needle of suspicion thus pointed towards these animals. The apparitions were dismissed as a figment of Varsha’s imagination.

However, as luck would have it, the team suddenly spotted a patch of water on the floor with no animal in the vicinity. Although the team members did not have any explanation, they contended that the water may have seeped through the old flooring. The Santragachhi Jheel is also close to the house, which might have been built after filling up a pond. The rationalists are now trying to unearth old land maps of the area to find out more. The team may visit the house again on Friday.

2. I also found this: http://wikimapia.org/7710020/27-SV-Rd-Extn-Haunted-House-STAY-AWAY
Please check the above link.

3. This has been collected from the link: http://www.indian-skeptic.org/html/is_v03/3-9-9.htm

IN SEARCH OF HAUNTED HOUSES AND GHOSTS

T.P. Nhaliath

Yes, we are in search of haunted houses! Not only haunted houses, but are in the look out for Poltergeist, Petitmal ghosts etc.

It was surprising to learn that there are “Haunted Houses” in Calcutta even in this part of the century.

In Kerala, during the past we had similar attacks at several places on several occasions. We call this menace “Kuttichathan” (Poltergeist) in malayalam. Our rationalist leaders late M.C. Joseph and Dr. A.T.Kovoor went to haunted houses and caught kuttichathans red handed. Now there are rationalists in all corners of Kerala who simply go to the “Haunted Houses” when such cases occur and catch them then and there. Generally we have found all the kuttichathans of Kerala in the servant of the house, a son or daughter, the mother or even the father himself. Here in Calcutta also it is someone among them. If interested we, the Bengal Rationalist Association (mainly consisting of Keralites) can go and look into the matter and catch the relative kuttichathans who are “playing” this drama. The incidents of Kuttichathan or poltergeist is nothing but a temporary mental aberration. There are also two kinds of disturbances. One is the poltergeist and the other Petimal.

I have also compiled a book under the title “Kuttichathan” in malayalam containing details of similar incidents investigated by the late M.C. Joseph.

Incidentally I would like to make it known that there are a few challenges still valid offering over a lakh of rupees to any one who can prove any super natural power. One is from B. Premanand, the Convenor of Indian Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and another from a rationalist of Kerala.

Here in Calcutta, or for that matter Bengal or India if there are any haunted houses, the Bengal Rationalist Association with the co-operation of Atheists and Rationalists though a few in number, scattered all over the country and the world can investigate the matter and catch the culprits.

As far as “Kuttichathan” or poltergeist is concerned, I hope it will be relevant to quote: It is a phenomenon common since ancient times in most parts of the world. That it is the result of human agency was discovered by Dr. Johnson and his friends. (18th Century)”

(Universal Encyclopeadia (Revised Edition, Vol.X Page 6235).

Now, my friends, give us an opportunity to confront with “Kuttichathan” Poltergeist, petitmal or Haunted house or a ghost, Atleast give us a chance to live in a haunted house!

4. A haunted night experiance : collected from : http://www.ghostvillage.com/encounters/2007/03022007.shtml

March 2, 2007
Disembodied Ghungroo Sounds

Raaj Datta, Kolkata, India, August 1999 and April 2001

I have had paranormal experiences throughout my life but I have never been harmed in any way whatsoever. Maybe I never let it get into my head. This particular incident, though shook me a bit.

Now, getting to the point of what exactly happened. I was in the 11th grade, and I stayed alone in Kolkata at that time. It was a rented accommodation. I stayed in the ground floor and the owner and his family stayed upstairs, but mine was completely separate. My bedroom was just beside the corridor to the kitchen. But the house was in a bizarre fashion. I had to take a full turn through the front room to get to the kitchen after crossing the corridor.

As usual, I would study till 1 a.m. and then go to sleep and that night nothing was too unusual. After switching off the lights, I went to bed and was fast asleep. After around 45 minutes or so, I heard something and my sleep got disturbed. It was still dark, but I could clearly hear the sound of someone walking in the corridor. The person was wearing a payel/ghungroo (a musical instrument worn by women around the ankle to produce rhythm) which is very common in India. I could not believe my ears and I thought that it must be the house owner’s granddaughter who was just 2 years then. But I had to dismiss that because the sound which was coming from the ghungroos gave the impression that it should be someone of around 20-25 years of age, and moreover it was almost 2 a.m. Strange enough, the person or the sound never moved beyond the corridor. This continued for another 15 minutes, then I decided to get up and switch on the lights. All of a sudden, the sound stopped. I checked the entire house, but I couldn’t find anything unusual.

The next day I asked the owner if they were awake late at night. He confirmed that they went to sleep around 11 p.m. and no one got up that night. I still could not believe what I heard last night; I thought I must have cooked it up in my brain. That night too, when I went to sleep, after an hour or so, I began hearing the same sound. I got a bit disturbed because on the second day the sound was coming from the front room and from that room only. It was not from the corridor, it was the front room. The only difference being, the sound was very distinct. After 5 minutes, I got up and switched on the lights and the sound vanished. I looked here and there but found nothing. The rest of the night was peaceful.

The next and the third night it was all the same but I got real scared. The sound was in my room and kept moving around my bed. I started calling God’s name but it made no difference. The next thing I knew, I jumped out of my bed and raced toward the switch board and just when I switched on the lights, the sound vanished. I was out of my wits as I have never come across something like this. But after that night nothing happened.

After the incident, I got in touch with a person who knew some sort of black magic. He gave me a talisman but he also mentioned that it was definitely not a spirit or ghost but something like a fairy. He warned me not to mess with it. One thing he clearly told me was that I shouldn’t go outdoors if it again happened. Afterwards, I pursued many people who were into occult practices and got one common answer; I might have some sort of past life relation with this thing. But believe me, I simply disagree with this hypothesis.

Again, in April of 2001, after we shifted to our own house with my mom and dad, I again went through the same experience. This time the sound did not enter our house, rather it came from our garden. I quickly opened the backside door but could not find anything. The next night it again happened and this time I armed myself with a kitchen knife and the talisman. I went outside and suddenly the sound shifted to the roof of our house. I decided to climb to the roof — we hadn’t yet built the stairs — so it was quite a risk, but I went ahead. I started climbing and just when I was a foot lower than the roof, a sudden thought crossed my mind; what if I see something ghastly? Then I looked down and understood if the thing had intentions of killing me, this was the time. I quickly got down and bolted the door from inside. I wondered what got into my mind that I got myself to climb to my potential death.

I told my mom the next morning, but she too was confused as to what exactly happened. But what happened had really happened and how could I dismiss it? What was it? I truly don’t know.

I am not posting this stuff just to get myself published. It is my request to the Ghostvillage team if they can tell me, what are these things?

Maybe because I do meditation, I am still unhurt. It is an accepted fact that meditation closes in the link between the normal and the paranormal. People who practice meditation on holy names are less likely to be hypnotized.
All I can say is, I am not a fool or an uneducated person, but something is there and I do not have any explanation at all. My email id is dattaraaj@gmail.com. If anyone has any clue what it could be, please mail me.

There are lot more in my stock and I will share this stories with you time to time.

Now please post if do you have such kind of experience and even what do you think about this topic.

Vampire with two sharpen teeth and flow of blood from their mouths are very familiar today with us specially to horror movie watchers . But is it true that that vampire really exists?

I have read about some special spiritual groups whose believes are different from ours general believe and they do some particular practices some of are very similar with the nature of Vampires .

Here are some views about proof of vampires and non-existence of them: (collected from different sources)
View 1.

es, there are such things as vampires. However, real vampires are quite different than the ones we see in movies and books. For all we know, those vampires do not exist, but real vampires are very similar.

Vampirism is a common fetish nowadays. Perhaps it isn’t right to call it a fetish, but it is an alternative life style. Often times, people who want to become ‘vampires’ have their teeth surgically altered to represent the traditional fangs of a vampire. Often considered to be Goth, vampires dress in wild and alternative clothing, usually black, and some wear exorbitant amounts of make-up. Religious objects, such as cross and more frequently ankhs, are often worn by vampires. Sometimes these symbols are worn upside down. They often congregate at night, where raves and other parties that cater to the goth and unusual lifestyles allow them to interact with each other.

Now the question is: Since we know vampires exist, do they really drink blood?

And the answer is Yes. Vampires do drink each other’s blood. It is considered a ritual of love and bonding to real vampires, and they consider the drinking of someone else’s blood an eternal bond. They can’t turn into bats or wolves, and they don’t have supernatural powers. They’re just uniquely alternative to the normal run of society. Some of them openly loathe the sunlight…not becuase it would kill them, but because it is their lifestyle. Despite this, vampires do not meet only in darkness. Real vampires walk around in the daytime just like any other human being, and sometimes practice their rituals during the day. Though not very common, some Vampires practice ‘Wicca’, which is witchcraft, an alternative religion, though mostly they have their own beleifs and rituals. Obviously, because of the blood exchange, practicing vampires have to be very

careful.

View 2.
believe that there are vampires, or were, from an applied historical context concerning believable and accredited record of their possible existence. Whether the type of vampire sucks blood in a cave, in the historical context, or sucks the life of this nation like President Bush is yet to be defined.

View 3.
There are energy vampires, even though you do not suspect
the existence of such persons.

“Some people, by their very presence, seem to drain the energy of those unprotected people around them. They will often associate with a victim who exhibits the classic signs of this drain.

General debility, lack of motivation and energy, an emaciated physique, a pallid complexion, and an overall sense of weakness are typically noted. These victims also tended to be highly suggestible people. The dominant partner (energy vampire) always resists a successful treatment, or protection, applied to their victim.

Most of these energy vampires are well-meaning, normal people. They are an unhappy lot, and do their damage by a telepathic draining of their victim’s energy resources. Mere separation of two people results in immediate positive changes in the victim. In my Los Angeles office I train all such victims in the art of spiritual protection techniques to eliminate any recurrences of this syndrome. Try the psychic protection negativity experience on the hypnotic exercise link for your own protection.

I prefer to use the term “psychic parasitism” for cases where this energy drain is involuntary and subconscious. If this effect is the result of a premeditated psychic attack, I refer to the perpetrator as an energy vampire.”

http://www.drbrucegoldberg.com/EnergyVampires.htm

Energy vampires do not need fangs to live

A lot of people will probably say that they sometimes experience weird and unpleasant feelings after even a short conversation with others, whether it is a friend or a stranger. A person may feel fagged out and weary after such communication. As it turns out, these conditions can result from an “attack” of an energy vampire. Unlike fictitious vampires that climb out of their coffins at night and kill people drinking their blood, energy vampires need to absorb other people’s energy.

http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/360/16423_vampire.html

http://www.search.com/search

View 4.

hat depends on your definition of vampire.
What you believe is YOUR reality, but not necessarily the reality of other people, who will believe differently.
There are several medical conditions, various psychosis, and historical events that researchers believe led to the myths of vampires.
I say “myth” advisedly here.
1.Are there people who drink blood and shun sunlight? Most definitely. Are they sane? Yes, most of them.
2.Are there people who are allergic to sunlight? Yes, although in most it is just an extreme sensitivity. In others it is a disease involving lack of hemoglobin.
3.Are there madmen who believe themselves to be the incarnation of myth? All too common, unfortunately.
4.Are there blood-drinking vampire bats? Definitely. But it is my understanding that they do not attack humans or animals unless they are sick, in fact, their diet is usually quite harmless and isn’t at all blood-dependant.
5. Are there super-natural entities in this world who mean humans harm? It is my belief that there are, [and that they are fallen angels, who can mimic many things and deliberately play on the fears/beliefs of people to seperate them from a loving God.] I think most people would agree that there are, although they may disagree about what they are.
6. Historically… rye, a grain that was easy to grow in England and Europe and was in certain time periods a staple food, spoils easily. When it spoils, it can cause confusion and hallucinations, even death. There are instances of whole villages consuming tainted rye, and either dying outright, with weird physical symptoms, or actually killing each other off in their food-poisoning-induced temporary madness. It is thought that some of the tales of murderous vampires/werewolves arise from these incidences.
7. I won’t comment on empathic or psi vampires, but there are many sorts of vampires, ranging from the common misquito to financial vampires which are nearly as common…<laugh>

View 5. (particular about TRUE BLOOD )

Tyra Banks is an idiot. So is Don Henrie - he’s just a human who files his teeth. I am a Nurse, utilizing factual, verifiable, applied medical knowledge. Read all of what I am about to write very, very carefully.

1. There are no real vampires. Cut and paste time, as it is too much work to type this out over and over so here goes. A brief discussion of the human digestive system and then the probable vampire population given an exponential growth rate should explain why vampires are not possible.
2. Vampires do not exist. Period. The human body is not designed to process large amounts of blood for nutrition. There is not enough protein, carbohydrates, and fats present in blood to maintain a complex creature such as Homo Sapiens or any theorized offshoot mutations. When a human ingests food it is first broken up by chewing, then churned up in the stomach with digestive juices to form a bolus called chyme. It then passes into the small intestine where it mixes with bile salts which continue breaking it down on a molecular basis, mostly affecting fats at this point. The broken down nutrients pass through the wall of the intestines and into the bloodstream where they are carried to each cell or stored for later use. Indigestible bulk continues through the intestines, turning a dark brown from the bile. Water is absorbed from this mass in the large intestine depending on the needs of the body - a well-hydrated person will usually have a softer stool than a dehydrated person will. Water also enters the bloodstream, and this is what helps to maintain blood pressure. The pressure tends to balance itself in a healthy person because the bloodstream goes through a formation in the kidney called the Loop of Henle, where the narrowing blood vessel forces excess water and cellular waste such as urea out through the cellular wall into the kidneys, where it is excreted through the ureters into the bladder, and then out of the body via the urethral passageway.

3. IMPORTANT - A person physically unable to process his own food for nutrition therefore also could not process blood - it’s the same process. Ingested blood does not transmit directly to the veins anyway - it would be chemically broken down by the digestive system.

4. Theoretical ingestion of blood to supply these nutrients would therefore have to occur at least once a day, and would require the ingestion of the entire blood supply which could not happen as the stomach is far too small to hold that much liquid volume. Furthermore, such a mass would be difficult to pass thru the intestines as it has no fibrous bulk, would create an intestinal impaction, causing massive vomiting from the large concentration of iron present, and any “real” vampire would have to eventually expel the waste, which would come out as a black, tarry, smelly goo.

5. These humans that affect the whole “vampiric lifestyle” are NOT vampires. They are simply humans playing their own little game, in their own little fantasy world, usually pandering to their own little sexual fetish, which may or may not actually be sexual. I too, play my own little game, in the SCA, but mine is a game where the deeds that I do are determined by the strength of my arm and sword - I am a warrior, with just as much skill and ability as any warrior of ancient times. The difference is that I am claiming to be something physically possible: a warrior, and I prove it everytime I strap on my armor and walk onto a SCA battlefield. The so-called “vampires” are claiming to be something physically impossible: a walking corpse, and all they prove is that black Victorian clothing, a pair of false fangs, and a little makeup make for a good Halloween costume - it does not make you a vampire.

6. Even if a vampire feeds once a week, and his victim also becomes a vampire, that is exponential growth, with four iterations a month. First iteration: One makes one, total two. Second iteration: Two make two, total four. Third iteration: Four make four, total eight. Fourth iteration: Eight make eight, total sixteen. 16 vampires at the end of one month, 256 at the end of the second month, 4096 by the end of the third month, 65,536 by the end of the fourth month, 1,048,476 at the end of the fifth, and 33,572,832 vampires at the end of half a year! By way of comparison, there are currently approximately 33 million people who have HIV/AIDS, and that is a world-wide epidemic. Do the math - vampires are a mathematical impossibility. This falls therefore, under the logic of Occam’s Razor - which states that when you have removed every impossible answer, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. Since there is no “vampiric plague” swarming the earth, the logical deduction is that they don’t exist.

7. Point of clarification about “vampire” bats: vampire is simply the name we have given them because they do drink blood, same as a flea, mosquito, or spider. Are these creatures vampires? No. They are living creatures, not legendary monsters. Drinking blood does not make you a vampire anymore than eating raw meat makes you a werewolf, although it might make you a mosquito.

8.The humans who profess to be vampires are victims of an all-encompassing self induced delusion. They are as human as you or I, regardless of their claims, and if they ingest HIV tainted blood they can most certainly contract the disease, esp. if they have any cuts, sores, or lesions in and or around their mouth. It is a very dangerous delusion to be laboring under. Note that there is absolutely no scientific or medical proof that these people derive any benefit at all from the ingestion of blood, and even worse are the so-called “psychic” vampires, because their delusion is one that they cannot substantiate with any concrete evidence at all.

Source(s):
The medical and scientific community does not need to disprove vampires, rather the “vampires” need to prove that they are what they say they are. Which they cannot do, not now, not ever. And don’t believe any of these so-called “vampire” websites spewing their fictional trash - they are fantasies at best and lies at worst.

VIEW 7.

Yes, we are real. Here’s my website if you have questions:

http://www.freewebs.com/redconverse/

VIEW 8.
http://www.vampyres-online.com/do.html

VIEW 9.
imple answer, yes. Modern day vampires do exist, but by no means are we the undead, fangs bared, hiding in the shadows waiting to rip your neck open (unless you piss me off *grin*) of myth or any other of the preconcieved notions you will have wandered into this site with. We are your friend, your co - worker, neighbor infact anyone regardless of ethinicity, background or religious belief. We have bills to pay, jobs, houses to run and families to bring up. We are part of, and interact with, society every day, we just have different needs to function or rather an added requirement that being energy whether it’s through blood drinking or psi feeding.

Can you tell me if I’m a vampire?

No, especially not over the net, nor should you let anyone else take responsibility for something that is such an intensely personal conclusion. Believing yourself something you are not based on someone else’s ‘diagnoses’ and because you want it frankly does not make it so.

But I have (insert trait/problem:_________)

If you are experiencing anything out of the ‘norm’ for you concerning mood, sleeping etc or any of the traits you think are connected it is vitally important that you see your doctor and get checked out before jumping to conclusions.

Can/will you make me a vampire?

NO and ummm…NO! Firstly not only is it debatable as to whether it can happen (and no I don’t know ‘how’ I was simply born this way and it’s not a franchise with the ‘recipie’ handed down or a ‘trade secret’ I’m keeping all to myself). Being responsibe for my own life is hard enough, I have no wish to be responsible for anyone else’s. Further clarification can be found here: Turning/embracing

Are you/vampires immortal?

Nope, again another myth and misconception. These are human flesh and blood bodies and will wear out, decay like any other. It’s true that many of us ‘age’ well and are frequently mistaken for much yonger than we are, but this does not equate with longevity. Regarding the soul/reincarnation, I see that as the only form of attainable ‘immortality’ so to speak, (and to that end every single being can be considered immortal - of course depending on your own thoughts and beliefs) but even that, in theory, has an end when all lessons have been learned and we have no more need of this particular plane or realm of existance (just my own conjecture and supposistion)

Can you prove you are what you say you are?

This is the net, and as such we have to take on trust that anyone we interact with is even who they say they are never mind what! In any event throughout the site and forums it is made quite clear that the ’superhuman’ abilities etc associated with the storybook vampire of myth and legend are not something we possess so even face to face, what could I do, and what would be proof enough? We are simply not here to provide proof or answer challanges, just provide information and interact with likeminded souls. What you do with that is up to you

As a vampire can/should I drink my own blood?

Absolutely not especially if your under the impression that it’s going to be productive to you as a vampiric person in any form. As an energy deficiant being you are simply replacing what you took or ‘cycling’ there is no gain or benifit.

Are there illnesses (physical or phsycological) that mimic or are mistaken for vampirisim?

At this point I am aware of two that have been associated and symptomatic those being renfields syndrome and Porphyria

So… I believe I’m a vampire, now how do I tell others?

Well, it’s not a

lways neccessary! It’s a personal, private aspect of your life, a life which isn’t going to be so terribly different or change so drastically that you must inform people before they find out. That said it’s understandabl

e that with certain people you won’t want to keep it from them, will want them to be aware of all aspects of your life. To begin with be very sure they are someone you can trust and who will keep your confidence whatever their thoughts about what you tell them. Pick an appropriate moment for opening a conversation about the occult or paranormal in general (it will be the easiest lead in to the topic of vampirism) ask t

hem what they think about it, ask them what they think about the idea of real vampires could they exist? Inform them of a site on vampires you’ve come accross (perhaps it could be this one) and suggest they take a look. The reaction to most of the above will let you know whether it’s a good idea to ‘out’ yourself to

that particular individual. Remember once out there there’s no ‘jumping back in the coffin’ (oh yes, we have a sense of humor too, it’s not all doom and gloom lol!)so don’t take it lightly!

WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE ?  PLEASE SHARE WITH ME.

NON-ATTACHMENT IS COMPLETE SELF-ABNEGATION

Just as every action that emanates from us comes back to us as reaction, even so our actions may act on other people and theirs on us. Perhaps all of you have observed it as a fact that when persons do evil actions, they become more and more evil, and when they begin to do good, they become stronger and stronger and learn to do good at all times. This intensification of the influence of action cannot be explained on any other ground than that we can act and react upon each other. To take an illustration from physical science, when I am doing a certain action, my mind may be said to be in a certain state of vibration; all minds which are in similar circumstances will have the tendency to be affected by my mind. If there are different musical instruments tuned alike in one room, all of you may have noticed that when one is struck, the others have the tendency to vibrate so as to give the same note. So all minds that have the same tension, so to say, will be equally affected by the same thought. Of course, this influence of thought on mind will vary according to distance and other causes, but the mind is always open to affection. Suppose I am doing an evil act, my mind is in a certain state of vibration, and all minds in the universe, which are in a similar state, have the possibility of being affected by the vibration of my mind. So, when I am doing a good action, my mind is in another state of vibration; and all minds similarly strung have the possibility of being affected by my mind; and this power of mind upon mind is more or less according as the force of the tension is greater or less.

Following this simile further, it is quite possible that, just as light waves may travel for millions of years before they reach any object, so thought waves may also travel hundreds of years before they meet an object with which they vibrate in unison. It is quite possible, therefore, that this atmosphere of ours is full of such thought pulsations, both good and evil. Every thought projected from every brain goes on pulsating, as it were, until it meets a fit object that will receive it. Any mind which is open to receive some of these impulses will take them immediately. So, when a man is doing evil actions, he has brought his mind to a certain state of tension and all the waves which correspond to that state of tension, and which may be said to be already in the atmosphere, will struggle to enter into his mind. That is why an evil-doer generally goes on doing more and more evil. His actions become intensified. Such, also will be the case with the doer of good; he will open himself to all the good waves that are in the atmosphere, and his good actions also will become intensified. We run, therefore, a twofold danger in doing evil: first, we open ourselves to all the evil influences surrounding us; secondly, we create evil which affects others, may be hundreds of years hence. In doing evil we injure ourselves and others also. In doing good we do good to ourselves and to others as well; and, like all other forces in man, these forces of good and evil also gather strength from outside.

According to Karma-Yoga, the action one has done cannot be destroyed until it has borne its fruit; no power in nature can stop it from yielding its results. If I do an evil action, I must suffer for it; there is no power in this universe to stop or stay it. Similarly, if I do a good action, there is no power in the universe which can stop its bearing good results. The cause must have its effect; nothing can prevent or restrain this. Now comes a very fine and serious question about Karma-Yoga — namely, that these actions of ours, both good and evil, are intimately connected with each other. We cannot put a line of demarcation and say, this action is entirely good and this entirely evil. There is no action which does not bear good and evil fruits at the same time. To take the nearest example: I am talking to you, and some of you, perhaps, think I am doing good; and at the same time I am, perhaps, killing thousands of microbes in the atmosphere; I am thus doing evil to something else. When it is very near to us and affects those we know, we say that it is very good action if it affects them in a good manner. For instance, you may call my speaking to you very good, but the microbes will not; the microbes you do not see, but yourselves you do see. The way in which my talk affects you is obvious to you, but how it affects the microbes is not so obvious. And so, if we analyse our evil actions also, we may find that some good possibly results from them somewhere. He who in good action sees that there is something evil in it, and in the midst of evil sees that there is something good in it somewhere, has known the secret of work.

But what follows from it? That, howsoever we may try, there cannot be any action which is perfectly pure, or any which is perfectly impure, taking purity and impurity in the sense of injury and non-injury. We cannot breathe or live without injuring others, and every bit of the food we eat is taken away from another’s mouth. Our very lives are crowding out other lives. It may be men, or animals, or small microbes, but some one or other of these we have to crowd out. That being the case, it naturally follows that perfection can never be attained by work. We may work through all eternity, but there will be no way out of this intricate maze. You may work on, and on, and on; there will be no end to this inevitable association of good and evil in the results of work.

The second point to consider is, what is the end of work? We find the vast majority of people in every country believing that there will be a time when this world will become perfect, when there will be no disease, nor death, nor unhappiness, nor wickedness. That is a very good idea, a very good motive power to inspire and uplift the ignorant; but if we think for a moment, we shall find on the very face of it that it cannot be so. How can it be, seeing that good and evil are the obverse and reverse of the same coin? How can you have good without evil at the same time? What is meant by perfection? A perfect life is a contradiction in terms. Life itself is a state of continuous struggle between ourselves and everything outside. Every moment we are fighting actually with external nature, and if we are defeated, our life has to go. It is, for instance, a continuous struggle for food and air. If food or air fails, we die. Life is not a simple and smoothly flowing thing, but it is a compound effect. This complex struggle between something inside and the external world is what we call life. So it is clear that when this struggle ceases, there will be an end of life.

What is meant by ideal happiness is the cessation of this struggle. But then life will cease, for the struggle can only cease when life itself has ceased. We have seen already that in helping the world we help ourselves. The main effect of work done for others is to purify ourselves. By means of the constant effort to do good to others we are trying to forget ourselves; this forgetfulness of self is the one great lesson we have to learn in life. Man thinks foolishly that he can make himself happy, and after years of struggle finds out at last that true happiness consists in killing selfishness and that no one can make him happy except himself. Every act of charity, every thought of sympathy, every action of help, every good deed, is taking so much of self-importance away from our little selves and making us think of ourselves as the lowest and the least, and, therefore, it is all good. Here we find that Jnâna, Bhakti, and Karma — all come to one point. The highest ideal is eternal and entire self-abnegation, where there is no “I,” but all is “Thou”; and whether he is conscious or unconscious of it, Karma-Yoga leads man to that end. A religious preacher may become horrified at the idea of an Impersonal God; he may insist on a Personal God and wish to keep up his own identity and individuality, whatever he may mean by that. But his ideas of ethics, if they are really good, cannot but be based on the highest self-abnegation. It is the basis of all morality; you may extend it to men, or animals, or angels, it is the one basic idea, the one fundamental principle running through all ethical systems.

You will find various classes of men in this world. First, there are the God-men, whose self-abnegation is complete, and who do only good to others even at the sacrifice of their own lives. These are the highest of men. If there are a hundred of such in any country, that country need never despair. But they are unfortunately too few. Then there are the good men who do good to others so long as it does not injure themselves. And there is a third class who, to do good to themselves, injure others. It is said by a Sanskrit poet that there is a fourth unnamable class of people who injure others merely for injury’s sake. Just as there are at one pole of existence the highest good men, who do good for the sake of doing good, so, at the other pole, there are others who injure others just for the sake of the injury. They do not gain anything thereby, but it is their nature to do evil.

Here are two Sanskrit words. The one is Pravritti, which means revolving towards, and the other is Nivritti, which means revolving away. The “revolving towards” is what we call the world, the “I and mine”; it includes all those things which are always enriching that “me” by wealth and money and power, and name and fame, and which are of a grasping nature, always tending to accumulate everything in one centre, that centre being “myself”. That is the Pravritti, the natural tendency of every human being; taking everything from everywhere and heaping it around one centre, that centre being man’s own sweet self. When this tendency begins to break, when it is Nivritti or “going away from,” then begin morality and religion. Both Pravritti and Nivritti are of the nature of work: the former is evil work, and the latter is good work. This Nivritti is the fundamental basis of all morality and all religion, and the very perfection of it is entire self-abnegation, readiness to sacrifice mind and body and everything for another being. When a man has reached that state, he has attained to the perfection of Karma-Yoga. This is the highest result of good works. Although a man has not studied a single system of philosophy, although he does not believe in any God, and never has believed, although he has not prayed even once in his whole life, if the simple power of good actions has brought him to that state where he is ready to give up his life and all else for others, he has arrived at the same point to which the religious man will come through his prayers and the philosopher through his knowledge; and so you may find that the philosopher, the worker, and the devotee, all meet at one point, that one point being self-abnegation. However much their systems of philosophy and religion may differ, all mankind stand in reverence and awe before the man who is ready to sacrifice himself for others. Here, it is not at all any question of creed, or doctrine — even men who are very much opposed to all religious ideas, when they see one of these acts of complete self-sacrifice, feel that they must revere it. Have you not seen even a most bigoted Christian, when he reads Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia, stand in reverence of Buddha, who Preached no God, preached nothing but self-sacrifice? The only thing is that the bigot does not know that his own end and aim in life is exactly the same as that of those from whom he differs. The worshipper, by keeping constantly before him the idea of God and a surrounding of good, comes to the same point at last and says, “Thy will be done,” and keeps nothing to himself. That is self-abnegation. The philosopher, with his knowledge, sees that the seeming self is a delusion and easily gives it up. It is self-abnegation. So Karma, Bhakti, and Jnana all meet here; and this is what was meant by all the great preachers of ancient times, when they taught that God is not the world. There is one thing which is the world and another which is God; and this distinction is very true. What they mean by world is selfishness. Unselfishness is God. One may live on a throne, in a golden palace, and be perfectly unselfish; and then he is in God. Another may live in a hut and wear rags, and have nothing in the world; yet, if he is selfish, he is intensely merged in the world.

To come back to one of our main points, we say that we cannot do good without at the same time doing some evil, or do evil without doing some good. Knowing this, how can we work? There have, therefore, been sects in this world who have in an astoundingly preposterous way preached slow suicide as the only means to get out of the world, because if a man lives, he has to kill poor little animals and plants or do injury to something or some one. So according to them the only way out of the world is to die. The Jains have preached this doctrine as their highest ideal. This teaching seems to be very logical. But the true solution is found in the Gita. It is the theory of non-attachment, to be attached to nothing while doing our work of life. Know that you are separated entirely from the world, though you are in the world, and that whatever you may be doing in it, you are not doing that for your own sake. Any action that you do for yourself will bring its effect to bear upon you. If it is a good action, you will have to take the good effect, and if bad, you will have to take the bad effect; but any action that is not done for your own sake, whatever it be, will have no effect on you. There is to be found a very expressive sentence in our scriptures embodying this idea: “Even if he kill the whole universe (or be himself killed), he is neither the killer nor the killed, when he knows that he is not acting for himself at all.” Therefore Karma-Yoga teaches, “Do not give up the world; live in the world, imbibe its influences as much as you can; but if it be for your own enjoyment’s sake, work not at all.” Enjoyment should not be the goal. First kill your self and then take the whole world as yourself; as the old Christians used to say, “The old man must die.” This old man is the selfish idea that the whole world is made for our enjoyment. Foolish parents teach their children to pray, “O Lord, Thou hast created this sun for me and this moon for me,” as if the Lord has had nothing else to do than to create everything for these babies. Do not teach your children such nonsense. Then again, there are people who are foolish in another way: they teach us that all these animals were created for us to kill and eat, and that this universe is for the enjoyment of men. That is all foolishness. A tiger may say, “Man was created for me” and pray, “O Lord, how wicked are these men who do not come and place themselves before me to be eaten; they are breaking Your law.” If the world is created for us, we are also created for the world. That this world is created for our enjoyment is the most wicked idea that holds us down. This world is not for our sake. Millions pass out of it every year; the world does not feel it; millions of others are supplied in their place. Just as much as the world is for us, so we also are for the world.

To work properly, therefore, you have first to give up the idea of attachment. Secondly, do not mix in the fray, hold yourself as a witness and go on working. My master used to say, “Look upon your children as a nurse does.” The nurse will take your baby and fondle it and play with it and behave towards it as gently as if it were her own child; but as soon as you give her notice to quit, she is ready to start off bag and baggage from the house. Everything in the shape of attachment is forgotten; it will not give the ordinary nurse the least pang to leave your children and take up other children. Even so are you to be with all that you consider your own. You are the nurse, and if you believe in God, believe that all these things which you consider yours are really His. The greatest weakness often insinuates itself as the greatest good and strength. It is a weakness to think that any one is dependent on me, and that I can do good to another. This belief is the mother of all our attachment, and through this attachment comes all our pain. We must inform our minds that no one in this universe depends upon us; not one beggar depends on our charity; not one soul on our kindness; not one living thing on our help. All are helped on by nature, and will be so helped even though millions of us were not here. The course of nature will not stop for such as you and me; it is, as already pointed out, only a blessed privilege to you and to me that we are allowed, in the way of helping others, to educate ourselves. This is a great lesson to learn in life, and when we have learned it fully, we shall never be unhappy; we can go and mix without harm in society anywhere and everywhere. You may have wives and husbands, and regiments of servants, and kingdoms to govern; if only you act on the principle that the world is not for you and does not inevitably need you, they can do you no harm. This very year some of your friends may have died. Is the world waiting without going on, for them to come again? Is its current stopped? No, it goes on. So drive out of your mind the idea that you have to do something for the world; the world does not require any help from you. It is sheer nonsense on the part of any man to think that he is born to help the world; it is simply pride, it is selfishness insinuating itself in the form of virtue. When you have trained your mind and your nerves to realise this idea of the world’s non-dependence on you or on anybody, there will then be no reaction in the form of pain resulting from work. 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. When you have acquired the feeling of non-attachment, there will then be neither good nor evil for you. It is only selfishness that causes the difference between good and evil. It is a very hard thing to understand, but you will come to learn in time that nothing in the universe has power over you until you allow it to exercise such a power. Nothing has power over the Self of man, until the Self becomes a fool and loses independence. So, by non-attachment, you overcome and deny the power of anything to act upon you. It is very easy to say that nothing has the right to act upon you until you allow it to do so; but what is the true sign of the man who really does not allow anything to work upon him, who is neither happy nor unhappy when acted upon by the external world? The sign is that good or ill fortune causes no change in his mind: in all conditions he continues to remain the same.

There was a great sage in India called Vyâsa. This Vyâsa is known as the author of the Vedanta aphorisms, and was a holy man. His father had tried to become a very perfect man and had failed. His grandfather had also tried and failed. His great-grandfather had similarly tried and failed. He himself did not succeed perfectly, but his son, Shuka, was born perfect. Vyasa taught his son wisdom; and after teaching him the knowledge of truth himself, he sent him to the court of King Janaka. He was a great king and was called Janaka Videha. Videha means “without a body”. Although a king, he had entirely forgotten that he was a body; he felt that he was a spirit all the time. This boy Shuka was sent to be taught by him. The king knew that Vyasa’s son was coming to him to learn wisdom: so he made certain arrangements beforehand. And when the boy presented himself at the gates of the palace, the guards took no notice of him whatsoever. They only gave him a seat, and he sat there for three days and nights, nobody speaking to him, nobody asking him who he was or whence he was. He was the son of a very great sage, his father was honoured by the whole country, and he himself was a most respectable person; yet the low, vulgar guards of the palace would take no notice of him. After that, suddenly, the ministers of the king and all the big officials came there and received him with the greatest honours. They conducted him in and showed him into splendid rooms, gave him the most fragrant baths and wonderful dresses, and for eight days they kept him there in all kinds of luxury. That solemnly serene face of Shuka did not change even to the smallest extent by the change in the treatment accorded to him; he was the same in the midst of this luxury as when waiting at the door. Then he was brought before the king. The king was on his throne, music was playing, and dancing and other amusements were going on. The king then gave him a cup of milk, full to the brim, and asked him to go seven times round the hall without spilling even a drop. The boy took the cup and proceeded in the midst of the music and the attraction of the beautiful faces. As desired by the king, seven times did he go round, and not a drop of the milk was spilt. The boy’s mind could not be attracted by anything in the world, unless he allowed it to affect him. And when he brought the cup to the king, the king said to him, “What your father has taught you, and what you have learned yourself, I can only repeat. You have known the Truth; go home.”

Thus the man that has practiced control over himself cannot be acted upon by anything outside; there is no more slavery for him. His mind has become free. Such a man alone is fit to live well in the world. We generally find men holding two opinions regarding the world. Some are pessimists and say, “How horrible this world is, how wicked!” Some others are optimists and say, “How beautiful this world is, how wonderful!” To those who have not controlled their own minds, the world is either full of evil or at best a mixture of good and evil. This very world will become to us an optimistic world when we become masters of our own minds. Nothing will then work upon us as good or evil; we shall find everything to be in its proper place, to be harmonious. Some men, who begin by saying that the world is a hell, often end by saying that it is a heaven when they succeed in the practice of self-control. If we are genuine Karma-Yogis and wish to train ourselves to that attainment of this state, wherever we may begin we are sure to end in perfect self-abnegation; and as soon as this seeming self has gone, the whole world, which at first appears to us to be filled with evil, will appear to be heaven itself and full of blessedness. Its very atmosphere will be blessed; every human face there will be god. Such is the end and aim of Karma-Yoga, and such is its perfection in practical life.

Our various Yogas do not conflict with each other; each of them leads us to the same goal and makes us perfect. Only each has to be strenuously practiced. The whole secret is in practicing. First you have to hear, then think, and then practice. This is true of every Yoga. You have first to hear about it and understand what it is; and many things which you do not understand will be made clear to you by constant hearing and thinking. It is hard to understand everything at once. The explanation of everything is after all in yourself. No one was ever really taught by another; each of us has to teach himself. The external teacher offers only the suggestion which rouses the internal teacher to work to understand things. Then things will be made clearer to us by our own power of perception and thought, and we shall realise them in our own souls; and that realisation will grow into the intense power of will. First it is feeling, then it becomes willing, and out of that willing comes the tremendous force for work that will go through every vein and nerve and muscle, until the whole mass of your body is changed into an instrument of the unselfish Yoga of work, and the desired result of perfect self-abnegation and utter unselfishness is duly attained. This attainment does not depend on any dogma, or doctrine, or belief. Whether one is Christian, or Jew, or Gentile, it does not matter. Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are, you will be perfect without reading a single religious book, without going into a single church or temple. Each one of our Yogas is fitted to make man perfect even without the help of the others, because they have all the same goal in view. The Yogas of work, of wisdom, and of devotion are all capable of serving as direct and independent means for the attainment of Moksha. “Fools alone say that work and philosophy are different, not the learned.” The learned know that, though apparently different from each other, they at last lead to the same goal of human perfection.

THE SECRET OF WORK

Helping others physically, by removing their physical needs, is indeed great, but the help is great according as the need is greater and according as the help is far reaching. If a man’s wants can be removed for an hour, it is helping him indeed; if his wants can be removed for a year, it will be more help to him; but if his wants can be removed for ever, it is surely the greatest help that can be given him. Spiritual knowledge is the only thing that can destroy our miseries for ever; any other knowledge satisfies wants only for a time. It is only with the knowledge of the spirit that the faculty of want is annihilated for ever; so helping man spiritually is the highest help that can be given to him. He who gives man spiritual knowledge is the greatest benefactor of mankind and as such we always find that those were the most powerful of men who helped man in his spiritual needs, because spirituality is the true basis of all our activities in life. A spiritually strong and sound man will be strong in every other respect, if he so wishes. Until there is spiritual strength in man even physical needs cannot be well satisfied. Next to spiritual comes intellectual help. The gift of knowledge is a far higher gift than that of food and clothes; it is even higher than giving life to a man, because the real life of man consists of knowledge. Ignorance is death, knowledge is life. Life is of very little value, if it is a life in the dark, groping through ignorance and misery. Next in order comes, of course, helping a man physically. Therefore, in considering the question of helping others, we must always strive not to commit the mistake of thinking that physical help is the only help that can be given. It is not only the last but the least, because it cannot bring about permanent satisfaction. The misery that I feel when I am hungry is satisfied by eating, but hunger returns; my misery can cease only when I am satisfied beyond all want. Then hunger will not make me miserable; no distress, no sorrow will be able to move me. So, that help which tends to make us strong spiritually is the highest, next to it comes intellectual help, and after that physical help.

The miseries of the world cannot be cured by physical help only. Until man’s nature changes, these physical needs will always arise, and miseries will always be felt, and no amount of physical help will cure them completely. The only solution of this problem is to make mankind pure. Ignorance is the mother of all the evil and all the misery we see. Let men have light, let them be pure and spiritually strong and educated, then alone will misery cease in the world, not before. We may convert every house in the country into a charity asylum, we may fill the land with hospitals, but the misery of man will still continue to exist until man’s character changes.

We read in the Bhagavad-Gita again and again that we must all work incessantly. All work is by nature composed of good and evil. We cannot do any work which will not do some good somewhere; there cannot be any work which will not cause some harm somewhere. Every work must necessarily be a mixture of good and evil; yet we are commanded to work incessantly. Good and evil will both have their results, will produce their Karma. Good action will entail upon us good effect; bad action, bad. But good and bad are both bondages of the soul. The solution reached in the Gita in regard to this bondage-producing nature of work is that, if we do not attach ourselves to the work we do, it will not have any binding effect on our soul. We shall try to understand what is meant by this “non-attachment to” to work.

This is the on central idea in tile Gita: work incessantly, but be not attached to it. Samskâra can be translated very nearly by “inherent tendency”. Using the simile of a lake for the mind, every ripple, every wave that rises in the mind, when it subsides, does not die out entirely, but leaves a mark and a future possibility of that wave coming out again. This mark, with the possibility of the wave reappearing, is what is called Samskâra. Every work that we do, every movement of the body, every thought that we think, leaves such an impression on the mind-stuff, and even when such impressions are not obvious on the surface, they are sufficiently strong to work beneath the surface, subconsciously. What we are every moment is determined by the sum total of these impressions on the mind. What I am just at this moment is the effect of the sum total of all the impressions of my past life. This is really what is meant by character; each man’s character is determined by the sum total of these impressions. If good impressions prevail, the character becomes good; if bad, it becomes bad. If a man continuously hears bad words, thinks bad thoughts, does bad actions, his mind will be full of bad impressions; and they will influence his thought and work without his being conscious of the fact. In fact, these bad impressions are always working, and their resultant must be evil, and that man will be a bad man; he cannot help it. The sum total of these impressions in him will create the strong motive power for doing bad actions. He will be like a machine in the hands of his impressions, and they will force him to do evil. Similarly, if a man thinks good thoughts and does good works, the sum total of these impressions will be good; and they, in a similar manner, will force him to do good even in spite of himself. When a man has done so much good work and thought so many good thoughts that there is an irresistible tendency in him to do good in spite of himself and even if he wishes to do evil, his mind, as the sum total of his tendencies, will not allow him to do so; the tendencies will turn him back; he is completely under the influence of the good tendencies. When such is the case, a man’s good character is said to be established.

As the tortoise tucks its feet and head inside the shell, and you may kill it and break it in pieces, and yet it will not come out, even so the character of that man who has control over his motives and organs is unchangeably established. He controls his own inner forces, and nothing can draw them out against his will. By this continuous reflex of good thoughts, good impressions moving over the surface of the mind, the tendency for doing good becomes strong, and as the result we feel able to control the Indriyas (the sense-organs, the nerve-centres). Thus alone will character be established, then alone a man gets to truth. Such a man is safe for ever; he cannot do any evil. You may place him in any company, there will be no danger for him. There is a still higher state than having this good tendency, and that is the desire for liberation. You must remember that freedom of the soul is the goal of all Yogas, and each one equally leads to the same result. By work alone men may get to where Buddha got largely by meditation or Christ by prayer. Buddha was a working Jnâni, Christ was a Bhakta, but the same goal was reached by both of them. The difficulty is here. Liberation means entire freedom — freedom from the bondage of good, as well as from the bondage of evil. A golden chain is as much a chain as an iron one. There is a thorn in my finger, and I use another to take the first one out; and when I have taken it out, I throw both of them aside; I have no necessity for keeping the second thorn, because both are thorns after all. So the bad tendencies are to be counteracted by the good ones, and the bad impressions on the mind should be removed by the fresh waves of good ones, until all that is evil almost disappears, or is subdued and held in control in a corner of the mind; but after that, the good tendencies have also to be conquered. Thus the “attached” becomes the “unattached”. Work, but let not the action or the thought produce a deep impression on the mind. Let the ripples come and go, let huge actions proceed from the muscles and the brain, but let them not make any deep impression on the soul.

How can this be done? We see that the impression of any action, to which we attach ourselves, remains. I may meet hundreds of persons during the day, and among them meet also one whom I love; and when I retire at night, I may try to think of all the faces I saw, but only that face comes before the mind — the face which I met perhaps only for one minute, and which I loved; all the others have vanished. My attachment to this particular person caused a deeper impression on my mind than all the other faces. Physiologically the impressions have all been the same; every one of the faces that I saw pictured itself on the retina, and the brain took the pictures in, and yet there was no similarity of effect upon the mind. Most of the faces, perhaps, were entirely new faces, about which I had never thought before, but that one face of which I got only a glimpse found associations inside. Perhaps I had pictured him in my mind for years, knew hundreds of things about him, and this one new vision of him awakened hundreds of sleeping memories in my mind; and this one impression having been repeated perhaps a hundred times more than those of the different faces together, will produce a great effect on the mind.

Therefore, be “unattached”; let things work; let brain centres work; work incessantly, but let not a ripple conquer the mind. Work as if you were a stranger in this land, a sojourner; work incessantly, but do not bind yourselves; bondage is terrible. This world is not our habitation, it is only one of the many stages through which we are passing. Remember that great saying of the Sânkhya, “The whole of nature is for the soul, not the soul for nature.” The very reason of nature’s existence is for the education of the soul; it has no other meaning; it is there because the soul must have knowledge, and through knowledge free itself. If we remember this always, we shall never be attached to nature; we shall know that nature is a book in which we are to read, and that when we have gained the required knowledge, the book is of no more value to us. Instead of that, however, we are identifying ourselves with nature; we are thinking that the soul is for nature, that the spirit is for the flesh, and, as the common saying has it, we think that man “lives to eat” and not “eats to live”. We are continually making this mistake; we are regarding nature as ourselves and are becoming attached to it; and as soon as this attachment comes, there is the deep impression on the soul, which binds us down and makes us work not from freedom but like slaves.

The whole gist of this teaching is that you should work like a master and not as a slave; work incessantly, but do not do slave’s work. Do you not see how everybody works? Nobody can be altogether at rest; ninety-nine per cent of mankind work like slaves, and the result is misery; it is all selfish work. Work through freedom! Work through love! The word “love” is very difficult to understand; love never comes until there is freedom. There is no true love possible in the slave. If you buy a slave and tie him down in chains and make him work for you, he will work like a drudge, but there will be no love in him. So when we ourselves work for the things of the world as slaves, there can be no love in us, and our work is not true work. This is true of work done for relatives and friends, and is true of work done for our own selves. Selfish work is slave’s work; and here is a test. Every act of love brings happiness; there is no act of love which does not bring peace and blessedness as its reaction. Real existence, real knowledge, and real love are eternally connected with one another, the three in one: where one of them is, the others also must be; they are the three aspects of the One without a second — the Existence - Knowledge - Bliss. When that existence becomes relative, we see it as the world; that knowledge becomes in its turn modified into the knowledge of the things of the world; and that bliss forms the foundation of all true love known to the heart of man. Therefore true love can never react so as to cause pain either to the lover or to the beloved. Suppose a man loves a woman; he wishes to have her all to himself and feels extremely jealous about her every movement; he wants her to sit near him, to stand near him, and to eat and move at his bidding. He is a slave to her and wishes to have her as his slave. That is not love; it is a kind of morbid affection of the slave, insinuating itself as love. It cannot be love, because it is painful; if she does not do what he wants, it brings him pain. With love there is no painful reaction; love only brings a reaction of bliss; if it does not, it is not love; it is mistaking something else for love. When you have succeeded in loving your husband, your wife, your children, the whole world, the universe, in such a manner that there is no reaction of pain or jealousy, no selfish feeling, then you are in a fit state to be unattached.

Krishna says, “Look at Me, Arjuna! If I stop from work for one moment, the whole universe will die. I have nothing to gain from work; I am the one Lord, but why do I work? Because I love the world.” God is unattached because He loves; that real love makes us unattached. Wherever there is attachment, the clinging to the things of the world, you must know that it is all physical attraction between sets of particles of matter — something that attracts two bodies nearer and nearer all the time and, if they cannot get near enough, produces pain; but where there is real love, it does not rest on physical attachment at all. Such lovers may be a thousand miles away from one another, but their love will be all the same; it does not die, and will never produce any painful reaction.

To attain this unattachment is almost a life-work, but as soon as we have reached this point, we have attained the goal of love and become free; the bondage of nature falls from us, and we see nature as she is; she forges no more chains for us; we stand entirely free and take not the results of work into consideration; who then cares for what the results may be?

Do you ask anything from your children in return for what you have given them? It is your duty to work for them, and there the matter ends. In whatever you do for a particular person, a city, or a state, assume the same attitude towards it as you have towards your children — expect nothing in return. If you can invariably take the position of a giver, in which everything given by you is a free offering to the world, without any thought of return, then will your work bring you no attachment. Attachment comes only where we expect a return.

If working like slaves results in selfishness and attachment, working as master of our own mind gives rise to the bliss of non-attachment. We often talk of right and justice, but we find that in the world right and justice are mere baby’s talk. There are two things which guide the conduct of men: might and mercy. The exercise of might is invariably the exercise of selfishness. All men and women try to make the most of whatever power or advantage they have. Mercy is heaven itself; to be good, we have all to be merciful. Even justice and right should stand on mercy. All thought of obtaining return for the work we do hinders our spiritual progress; nay, in the end it brings misery. There is another way in which this idea of mercy and selfless charity can be put into practice; that is, by looking upon work as “worship” in case we believe in a Personal God. Here we give up all the fruits our work unto the Lord, and worshipping Him thus, we have no right to expect anything from man kind for the work we do. The Lord Himself works incessantly and is ever without attachment. Just as water cannot wet the lotus leaf, so work cannot bind the unselfish man by giving rise to attachment to results. The selfless and unattached man may live in the very heart of a crowded and sinful city; he will not be touched by sin.

This idea of complete self-sacrifice is illustrated in the following story: After the battle of Kurukshetra the five Pândava brothers performed a great sacrifice and made very large gifts to the poor. All people expressed amazement at the greatness and richness of the sacrifice, and said that such a sacrifice the world had never seen before. But, after the ceremony, there came a little mongoose, half of whose body was golden, and the other half brown; and he began to roll on the floor of the sacrificial hall. He said to those around, “You are all liars; this is no sacrifice.” “What!” they exclaimed, “you say this is no sacrifice; do you not know how money and jewels were poured out to the poor and every one became rich and happy? This was the most wonderful sacrifice any man ever performed.” But the mongoose said, “There was once a little village, and in it there dwelt a poor Brahmin with his wife, his son, and his son’s wife. They were very poor and lived on small gifts made to them for preaching and teaching. There came in that land a three years’ famine, and the poor Brahmin suffered more than ever. At last when the family had starved for days, the father brought home one morning a little barley flour, which he had been fortunate enough to obtain, and he divided it into four parts, one for each member of the family. They prepared it for their meal, and just as they were about to eat, there was a knock at the door. The father opened it, and there stood a guest. Now in India a guest is a sacred person; he is as a god for the time being, and must be treated as such. So the poor Brahmin said, ‘Come in, sir; you are welcome,’ He set before the guest his own portion of the food, which the guest quickly ate and said, ‘Oh, sir, you have killed me; I have been starving for ten days, and this little bit has but increased my hunger.’ Then the wife said to her husband, ‘Give him my share,’ but the husband said, ‘Not so.’ The wife however insisted, saying, ‘Here is a poor man, and it is our duty as householders to see that he is fed, and it is my duty as a wife to give him my portion, seeing that you have no more to offer him.’ Then she gave her share to the guest, which he ate, and said he was still burning with hunger. So the son said, ‘Take my portion also; it is the duty of a son to help his father to fulfil his obligations.’ The guest ate that, but remained still unsatisfied; so the son’s wife gave him her portion also. That was sufficient, and the guest departed, blessing them. That night those four people died of starvation. A few granules of that flour had fallen on the floor; and when I rolled my body on them, half of it became golden, as you see. Since then I have been travelling all over the world, hoping to find another sacrifice like that, but nowhere have I found one; nowhere else has the other half of my body been turned into gold. That is why I say this is no sacrifice.”

This idea of charity is going out of India; great men are becoming fewer and fewer. When I was first learning English, I read an English story book in which there was a story about a dutiful boy who had gone out to work and had given some of his money to his old mother, and this was praised in three or four pages. What was that? No Hindu boy can ever understand the moral of that story. Now I understand it when I hear the Western idea — every man for himself. And some men take everything for themselves, and fathers and mothers and wives and children go to the wall. That should never and nowhere be the ideal of the householder.

Now you see what Karma-Yoga means; even at the point of death to help any one, without asking questions. Be cheated millions of times and never ask a question, and never think of what you are doing. Never vaunt of your gifts to the poor or expect their gratitude, but rather be grateful to them for giving you the occasion of practicing charity to them. Thus it is plain that to be an ideal householder is a much more difficult task than to be an ideal Sannyasin; the true life of work is indeed as hard as, if not harder than, the equally true life of renunciation.

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Nasrallah condemns Israeli assault, ‘Arab collaboration’ Daily Star - Lebanon, Lebanon - 18 hours ago … because in Gaza there are men able and ready to fight. All we ask is that Egypt does not exploit the war to put pressure on the Palestinian resistance. … Hezbollah urges Egypt to open Rafah crossing as Gaza under … Xinhua Israel faces threat of Gaza conflict spreading to northern … Telegraph.co.uk Nasrallah: Israel will fail in Gaza Al-Bawaba We can expect nothing but worst if there is a war between India and Pakistan. Might The army wants ,might the politicians want , might a WAR is needed to win this time election but: we the common people we don’t want a war. A war is good when played in a computer but  not acceptable in our life. We hate terrorism and the people who promote terrorism.The time has already came to show them we do not fear terror. But for this War is not a solution …it will only increase the problem