Inaction in Action and Action in Inaction

Divine Life Society Publication: The Philosophy of The Bhagavadgita by Sri Swami Krishnananda

Yoga is the establishment of harmony in all the levels of being. There is nothing superior or inferior in this world. Everything that God has created has a value in its own level, or stage. And the level in which we are now is also equally valuable, and its value bas to be recognised by us; we cannot reject it as if it is not there. Our action, our conduct, our movement, our behaviour in the particular atmosphere in which we are placed has to be one of harmony with that atmosphere. When the harmony is established between ourselves and the environment outside, our actions cease to be actions, they become movements of Cosmic Power. Action, then, becomes non-action; one can see action in non-action and non-action in action. Our intelligence has to rise to that level where we should be able to recognise inaction in action and action in inaction. When our action is set in tune with the movements of things outside, action becomes non-action. It is as if we are doing nothing, because we are moving in harmony with the whole pattern of the environment outside, with which we are connected, and of which we are a part, organically. When we are in union with the laws of the universe, our actions are not our actions. They are laws operating in themselves in an impersonal manner.

But there are other actions which appear to be non-actions while they are really actions. For instance, people are often under the impression that when they can keep quiet, doing nothing, they are in an inactive state. There is no such thing as keeping quiet. And even when we keep quiet imagining that we are doing nothing, we are doing something, because the mind is acting, and mental action is real action—that is the source of bondage as well as freedom. But, when action is performed as a yajna, or sacrifice—then, all our efforts and movements become sacrifices of the self in the knowledge of this unity of ourselves with things; such action is sacrifice, and such action is no action. This is knowledge, wherein the individual that performs the action, the end toward which it is directed, the process of the action—all these appear to be one continuous movement of a single Reality, like the dashing of the waves in the ocean, one colliding with the other, the waves and the process of their collision and that which is connecting them together, all being one mass of water, and the very force of this water. The action is dedicated to the Absolute, and we ourselves as individuals, as the source of action, are a part of that Absolute, and the process of the offering of ourselves through the medium of action is also a working of the Absolute itself—Brahman. The aim or the objective of this action is also the Absolute. It is all a movement of the universal force of God-Being within itself as every movement of the waters in the ocean can be regarded as the single movement of the root of the ocean itself. This is the yajna described in the Fourth Chapter as compatible with action in this world. Knowledge-based action is karma yoga.

It was told in the Second Chapter that knowledge is necessary and action has to be rooted in it. The imperative was declared there. And how actions are not our actions really was mentioned in the Third Chapter. Now, how this action can really be rooted in knowledge, how this performance has to become a practical day-to-day affair in our life, is explained in the Fourth Chapter. This particular section emphasises the necessity to behold a unity between activity and knowledge.

Often we make a distinction between the two, and no one can help making this distinction. We can never believe, ordinarily, that knowing is the same as acting. And so, under a misapprehension that the two are different, we take to a way of knowledge severing ourselves from action or activity altogether; or, otherwise, we go to the other extreme and plunge into activity without proper understanding or, knowledge. What we call activity is the movement of our being, it is not something outside us, as the rays of the Sun can be said to be the movement of the power and force of the Sun itself. Our efforts, our endeavours, our conduct and behaviour and action in this world are a spatio-temporal expression of our own being. When this spatio-temporality is cut off from the movement of our being, when we do not any more regard ourselves as helpless victims at the hands of this isolatedness in space and time, we, then, become a universal being participating in the purpose of the Cosmos. Then it is that we receive the Grace of God, for God is non-spatial and non-temporal. God’s actions are not individualised movements towards some ulterior purpose. Human beings as we are today in this condition, we will find it difficult to understand what all this means.

Thus, the Fourth Chapter gives us two important aspects of the message of yoga. Firstly, that God’s Hands move in this world as Incarnations which cannot be counted in number. It is not that there is only Incarnation historically. Every event in the world is a divine miracle beyond the understanding of the human individual. And this divine miracle is the working of the Incarnations. The other message of the Chapter is that we have to perform, perforce, action as integrated beings in the structure of the universe, basing it on a knowledge of the wholeness of things and our basic relationship with the environment in which we are, so that karma yoga becomes more and more intensive as we rise higher and higher in the level of our comprehension. When we realise God, when we enter into the being of God, when we are established in the wholeness of God’s Being which is called realisation of God, action becomes knowledge in the literal sense; so; that the two do not exist even in thought or memory; action is being, and being is action; God’s existence is the same as God’s activity, and God’s activity is the same as God’s existence, as distinguished from what it appears in our own individual level.

Inaction in Action and Action in Inaction - The Philosophy of The Bhagavadgita by Sri Swami Krishnananda