29 SelflesSelfless Services Service

Selfless Service _______________________________________________________________________________

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1 Selfless Service (Seva (Punjabi: )) (self-realiza tion) (selfless service) (elders) (destitute) (insipid) (Mystic) () (Truth) (one Whole) (Spiritual dimension) (temple) (mosque) (church) (synagogue of Jewish) (Gurudwara)


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2 ? (Saint Francis)


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3 ? ? (selfness) ( )

(ethic and morality) (Buddha)


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4 (The Gita Lord Krishna) Arjuna

(Krishna)

Arjuna

(Universal Reality). (Universal Soul): ()


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5

Upanishad (calculate) ! (I-Ness)


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6 !

Bhagawat Gita

(spirituality)


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7 ? !

(self realization and God realization)

Huzur Charan Singh Ji


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8

(Father)

( Mant Mat)

() () ? ?

Surat Shabd Yoga (Sound). (Father )

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o\ . . As on~e very first basic spiritual endeavour to attain the goal of self realisation, the saints laid down the rule of seva, selfless service unto alLcreatures, and all beings. Serve the sick,-- serve the poor, serve your elders, serve your parents, serve your neighbows, serve the destitute, serve all humanity. Again and again, this was their message. They were never tired of reiterating in their teachings that the salt of life is selfless service; it makes life worth living and gives it a real taste. Without it life will be dry, essenceless and insipid.

The vision of all past and present saints and mystics is that the entire universe is pervaded by the one universal power, which envelopes interpenetrates and pervades this entire universe of names and forms. It fills every speck of space, it fills and indwells and enlivens the atoms of matter. The whole world is filled with its consciousness. This is the result of their insight and of their experience. Generation after generation, intrepid pioneers in the spiritual quest and exploration, there came many illumined souls, reconfmning the experience and findings of their predecessors . So their observations became time tested and were given to us as the great fact, as the ultimate Truth. Out of this awareness and experience came the knowledge of the pervasive presence of the divine animating His created universe. The saints perceived the presence of this essence and principle in each and every creature, in each and every atom of the cosmos.

It is therefore, the common consciousness that meets all existence into one Whole. They thus experienced and discovered and proclaimed to us this unity of all life . Out of this oneness emerged two very important and significant facts which are most meaningful. One is that when we engage_ in service of the creation, we are in actual fact adoring this Divine Being that is the living Reality present in all beings. We have to open our eyes to this vision. Service is more than a mere social process. It is not just a social activity confined to this earth plane or to this material world. It has significance and meaning upon a higher spiritual dimension.

When we serve man we actually serve the God hidden in_ man, we serve the divinity immanent in all creation. Therefore, lived in this manner and engaged in with this awareness and in this spirit, to serve is to adore the God present in the heart of all beings. If, while engaged in this outer service, we have this understanding spliit and per(orm it thus, then we become richly blessed within the dimension of our spiritual life also. We begin to grow in the realisation that God jr( not merely confined to the --; s temple, the mosque, the churchj the synagogue or the Gurudwara; but He is before us wherever we tum. From all the ten directions of the compass, God is looking at us. He is coming to us to be served .and therefore, it is our privilege to worship this God who comes in human form to accept our service. We engage in servic~ .with a spirit ofreverence, and humility; with a feeling of thankfulness and gratitude for the being who is giving us this golden chance of evolving spiritually through serving Him. No longer with the idea that I apl .doing something wonderful, something exceptional, something which is not being done by others.

The second important dimension of this act of selfless service is something much more fundamental, much more essential. What is that stahds between us and God what is the goal of our life, in whom alone we ultimately find res~ peace, attaining whom we succeed in achieving that which we are striving to reach but cannot reach? All human ~eings are striving from birth to death-to avoid all sorrow, pain, suffering- and unpleasan~ ex.periences of any kind . They are tryiqg eagerly to acquire

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happiness, yet no ~ ever born succeeded in this quest. Joy and happiness are always intermingled. It is a world of dualities. So when we run after happiness we are bound to have sorrow also in its way. Therefore, this quest of unalloyed absolute happiness, unaccompanied by any reaction, without any sorrow, is a myth, which can never be attained. It is like a horizon which can never be reached. It is a state to be obtained not in any created conditioned thing, limited by time and space, which has a beginning and an end, which is changeful, perishable by its nature, thus imperfect.

This experience for which all human beings are seeking and struggling for; the entering into an absolute bliss, a total, unalloyed, inexhaustible happiness, and joy. Saint Francis of Assissi puts it as:

That is only to be experienced in God-experience.

And that is the actual deepest personal experience of saints. They found that upon attaining God immediately the individual soul transcends all pain and sorrow, and becomes filled with the eternal satisfaction, free and fearless. That state is the goal of life. They call it liberation. In the attainment of this goal, the greatest barrier is our identification with this little temporary personality. We are identified with this perishable cage of flesh and bones which is the abode of so much pain, suffering, old age, disease, decay and all imperfections.

We cling to it, we love it, we are attached to it We are also identified with this little thinking machine, this little mental self. Due to our intense identification with these two factors, our body and our mind, we are -so completely bound to them that we make them the very centre of our life. We live only to serve them we live only to gather things in order to satisfy their desires, satisfy their cravings, satisfy their appetites, and our entire life becomes a little petty process confined to this body, to this little personality, self-centred, self-seeking and selfish. This ego is the product of ignorance, the product of identification with that which is not our essential self, it is only an added passing factor, and adjunct. This ego and the .~elfishness arising out of this ego is the main barrier between man and God. This-is the stone, iron, granite wall between us and eternal bliss, between us and infmite peace, between us and perfect existence, between us and deathless existence. Therefore, to break down this wall is our main task.

At the innermost depth of the soul all are identical. It is the same soul that is the indwelling consciousness in all beings. Mistaking this perishable body for the real self and becoming attached to it, developing selfishness and separating ourselves from all other beings who are in fact equal to us; is the greatest .ignorance. Forgetting the essential soul and identifying with the non-essential self, the temporary body, we become self-centred and selfish. This is the greatest blemish of human personality. It is the root cause of all clash, conflict and hatred. This self-centred attitude is the pain of_ human life and out of it arises all sorrow, all misery, all the.problems of the human society within the confines of a single family, within the four walls of a single-household. Due to this selfishness, how much disharmpny, how much discord, how much clash, how much conflict; how much tension is created between brothers of the same .family? If there is selfishness between husband and wife, the whole life becomes a continuous conflict and a problematic affair. Hence, this selfishness is at the basis of all real human probleins, individual .as well as collective. -

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,Selfishness is a grea! human predicament and there is only one way of breaking down this wall between God and man, between man and man. To overcome this problem, the application of total unselfishness, consciously and purposefully is adopted as a way of life. As long as we do not discard and begin to think in tenns of the welfare of others, we cannot liberate ourselves from the stranglehold of selfishness. And the way to counteract this; is selflessness. Selflessness is the very stuff of true service and right from ancient times it has been proclaimed:

0 man, refuse to bow down to this curse of selfishness. Know that God has given you this body in order to benefit life around you, Benefit all creature, all living beings.

The entire concept of ethics and morality is summed up in the following: "Anything that hanns others is a sin that is-undesirable, that will stand in the way of ou r attaining the goal of life." Therefore, this great value of doing good to others was placed before us as a shinning ideal, and all those who have lived and died for this concept have become immortalised and enshrined in our memory.

At the moment of his departure from earth, the compassionate Buddha, gathered together all his disciples and delivered to them his last message: Walk the highways and the byways of this great land for the happiness of the many and for the welfare of the many, this I commend unto you as the last parting message." Service of parents, service of elders, service of the Guru, has been a timeless concept which has come down to our life. In the Gita Lord Krishna says:

If you want to attain illumination, if you want to attain divine wisdom, 0 Arjuna, know that great Reality, by going to Great ones, serving them and pleasing them.

This concept of service unto all living beings as a spiritual discipline to attain self-realisation elevated this concept of service from the dimension of social service with a higher dimension of a spiritual process. At the basis of it is the vision, that it is not the human individual that we are serving but it is the divine that is enshrined within the human being. More specifically Lord Krishna says:

0 Arjuna I am the inner Spirit dwelling within the body of all creatures. I am the beginning, the middle- and the end. I am the all in all. I am, therefore, present as the indwelling Spirit in all creatures.

He does not say man alone, but all creatures. In this way, service is not something that merely brings us into living relationship with our fellow beings or this ht,up.an world;but service when rightly perceived and rightly done is something that links us with the spiritual Reality which pervades this world and dwells within all. Thus,

s~rvice becomes a process, a method and a means of linking ourselves with God, linking ourselves with that I?ivine principle, the Universal Reality. Done with this deeper awareness, service becomes a process towards union.

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Anything that puts the human individual into conscious contact with the Universal Soul; leads to union. It is the worship of God immanent in man. It is the love of the Divine indwelling in all living beings. It is serving God, through the poor, the sick

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Oh, how rewarding would be the work of one who really understood the divinity of man!

The essential thing is renunciation of the ego. Without the annihilation of the I-Ness none can pour out his whole heart in working for others. The man of renunciation

sees all with an equal eye and devotes himself to the service of all.

In the real sense we cannot be of true help to anyone, we can only serve: serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself, if you have the privilege. If the Lord grants that we can help any of of His children, blessed we are that this privilege was given to us when others had it not. And give up the idea that by ruling over others we can do any good to them.

Bring help to the poor; and bring more help to the rich, for they require it more than the poor. Bring help to the ignorant and bring more help to the educated, for the vanities of the educated of our time are tremendous! Thus bring help to all and leave the rest unto the Lord, for in the words of the same Lord, "To work you have the right and not the fruits thereof. Let not our work produce results for us, and at the same time may we never be without work." And thank God for giving us this world as a moral arena to help our development, but never imagine we can change the world.

The path of selfless service which eventually leads to the attainment of the infinite bliss of the soul, cannot be futile. As a rule, .if any task is left incomplete, it is a waste as the performer cannot realise its fruit; but this is not so with selfless service because every action brings about and immediate purification of the heart.

We do not lose anything in doing service, whether the service is big or small, of great or small importance, it has its own advantages and benefits. It prepares the mind for the reception of the knowledge of the soul. The impressiQns of these good actions are permanently imbedded in our subconscious mind. -The force of such impressions will again propel us to do more good actions. Sympathy, love and the spirit of service will be gradually developed. Nothing is lost when the candle burns.

In agriculture we may manure and plough the field. Our efforts may be rendered futile if there are no rains. This is not the case with selfless service. There is no uncertainty here regarding the results of any effort. Further, there is not the least chance of getting any harm by practising this discipline. If the doctor is a. little careless and administers medicine in over doses, some harm may result. This is not so with selfless service. Even a little of it in any form, will save us from the great fear of worldly existence with its pains, and sorrows.

The wise, possessed of knowledge, have abandoned the fruit of their actions, and freed from the fetters of birth, go to the place which is beyond all evil

Bhagavat Gita

For our own and for the . benefit of others, we must keep busy doing ~onstructive selfless service. For whoever would enter the kingdom of God must try also to dG

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good for others. If we follow this pattern, we will feel the mood-dispelling joy of knowing we are advancing, physically, mentally and spiritually.

Happiness lies in making others happy and forsaking self-interest to bring them help and joy. Giving service to others is tremendously important to our own well-being, and a most satisfying experience. Some people think only of their own family. "Us four and no

more." Others think only of their ego~ "How am I going to be happy?" But these are the very persons who do not become happy! To live for one's self is only the source of all misery.

In being of spiritual, mental and material service to others, we will find our own needs fulfilled. As we forget the ego in service to others, we will find that, without seeking it, our own cup of happiness will be full.

When we came into this world, we cried and everyone else smiled. We should so live our life so that when we leave, everyone will cry, but we will be smiling.

Worship and selfless service are necessary to take away the veil, to lift off tlte bondage of illusion. They do not give freedom; but lead to it. All the same, without effort on our own part we cannot open our eyes and see what we are.

Merit and demerit do not affect that sevadar who has evenness or equanimity of mind, for he rejoices not over the good fruit of the one nor worries over the other. He has composure of mind in success and failure. He" mind is resting in God all the while. Service which is of a binding nature loses that nature when thus performed. The self1ess sevadar has no attachment to the worldly objects. He has purified his mind by the means of constant selfless service. He has given up all idea of reward. He treats the body as an instrument of God given to him for the fulfilment of God's purpose and attributes all activities to the divine actor within.

He who works merely for God's sake becomes karmaless. Then even acts like eating, walking, talking, breathing, sleeping are transformed into divine activities. Work will then become worship. This is the great secret. When all actions are performed for God's sake in fulfilment of His purpose without desire for fruit, the service becomes a channel to self-realisation and God-realisation. Such a sevadar attains knowledge of the Truth, and ultimate liberation.

God has given this marvellous machine of the human body to man to enable him to go back to Him and thereby, for the attainment of an immortal life. If man uses this body only for the satisfaction of petty desires and small selfish ends, he becomes an object of pity and condemnation and remains forever caught up in the wheel of births and deaths:

He who has developed a pure, poised reason and who restshis 'mind in God is aware that all actions are performed by the divine actor within. He is perfectly conscious that God really moves and operates ~his body-machine. .

Huzur Charan Singh Ji sumineq up the whole principle of selflesf service saying:-

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"We do seva with the body so that we may be able to eliminate the ego from within ourselves. We f~l more humble when we are working shoulder to shoulder with the masses. We work with our body for the congregation or for our fellow human beings, we try to be helpful and useful to them just to create humility within us. We do seva of wealth because accumulating wealth usually leads us towards vices, and attachment to wealth creates an inflated ego, a sense of superiority or a sense of possession in us. If we use wealth for the well-being of the masses, for the congregation, it is to our advantage. If some people are filled with love and devotion for the Father directly or indirectly by means of their wealth, that is to their advantage.

We do seva of the mind, which means withdrawing our consciousness to the eye centre with...the help of simran and dhyan, and being steadfast on the principles of Sant Mat.

Any seva that anybody can do is most welcome, it will lead to humility and the destruction of the ego. All necessary steps, and a help for meditation, but the real seva is to attend to meditation, to connect our soul with the Sound. These sevas of body, wealth and mind are the means to that end. If we forget the end, the means will only be to clean the vessel but not fill it. Real seva is to clean the vessel and also to fill it. Some give emphasis only to the means without worrying about the end, which is wrong. We clean a cup or a utensil not to see it clean, but because we want to use it- we want to put milk in it, we wa~t to put coffee or tea into it. We want to use that clean vessel. That is the purpose of cleaning the vessel. If every day we go on cleaning a vessel but again it gets dusty, and again we clean it, then why clean it at all? What is the use if we do not use it, we do not fill it?

So all sevas are the means to an end and the real end is the seva of S urat S h abd Yoga, that is connecting our soul to the Sound. That is the seva that is the most pleasing to the Lord and to the Master. Meditation is the only worship that pleases the Father."

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29 SelflesSelfless Services Service