The Duty of Karma Yoga: Cooperating with Our Higher Self-2.: Swami Krishnananda

Chinmaya Mission: 

Camp Hanuman 2024 took place at Chinmaya Hanuman Ashram from July 8th to July 12th. 

Sixty-five campers from junior kindergarten to Grade 8 participated in a variety of activities, including heritage classes, yogasana, meditation, archery, martial arts, and games. 

The camp was led by Shankar from Chinmaya Mission Pittsburgh and supported by a dedicated team of 23 volunteers. 

This team comprised eight teachers from the Chinmaya Youth at Western University and 15 high school volunteers. Additionally, adult volunteers provided essential support throughout the camp. 

The program aimed to engage children in cultural and spiritual education, promoting a sense of discipline and teamwork through a diverse range of activities. 

The combination of experienced leadership and enthusiastic volunteers created a nurturing environment for the young campers, making the camp an enriching and memorable experience for all participants.

========================================================================================

Thursday 01, Aug 2024, 06:40.
Article
Scripture
The Duty of Karma Yoga: Cooperating with Our Higher Self: 2.
Swami Krishnananda
(Spoken on October 14, 1984)

========================================================================================

To us, the world is that which is conceived by us. That which is incapable of comprehension and experience does not exist; therefore, the world's existence is the same as the consciousness we have of some degree of outward reality. It is doubtful if we are conscious of the whole world as it is in itself in all its contents and levels of inclusiveness. It does not appear to be so because we do not live in all levels of our personality at the same time. Each person knows for one's own self what is the particular level that operates in a particular condition. We never act entirely at every time, and hence, the entire world is never presented before our experience.

Thus, even the spiritual encounter, which is the largest meaning that one can read in life, appears to be so conditioned in respect of our capacity to receive the significance of spirituality, and there can perhaps be as many comprehensions of it as there are people in the world. No two persons are born at the same moment, evidently; therefore, no two persons can be said to be in the same level of the evolutionary process. Thus, from this point of view, the life spiritual, as far as human nature in its present makeup is concerned, is also a conditioned process. We cannot be unconditionally aware of God, because we are not unconditioned beings. Conditioned individualities that we are, our approach, our experience and our understanding are also conditioned in the same measure and in the same proportion. It may be anything, from the lowest matter to the ultimate concept of the final aim of life; whatever be the content of our awareness, it matters little insofar as it has a meaning to us only to the extent it is received by our consciousness under a given condition.

This was well known to Bhagavan Sri Krishna, and in his variegated, methodical and multifaceted definitions of the human approach to God, he has also precisely stated a simple fourfold attitude possible for a spiritual seeker. In the first verse, the highest possible way is mentioned: the fixing of the intellect. The reason in man, the rationality in the human individual, seems to be the greatest of gifts, and the more intense is our reasoning capacity, the more evolved we may be said to be as human beings.

Among the many facets of our psychological personality, four important ones can be cited, namely, the intellect or the reason, the will or the volition, the feeling or the emotion, and the energy or the capacity of action. It is these psychological facets within us that designate spiritual approach in a fourfold manner. We call these methods the yogas, known as jnana yoga, raja yoga, bhakti yoga and karma yoga. These methods are fourfold in nature, inasmuch as our personality is fourfold. The capacity of the intellect is the highest possibility in us. The reason is the principle value in ourselves. Nothing can equal it. If the reason fails, every other faculty will lose its meaning.

Thus, at the very outset we are told mayy eva mana ādhatsva mayi buddhiṃ niveśaya, nivasiṣyasi mayy eva ata ūrdhvaṃ na saṃśayaḥ (BG 12.8): “Fix yourself in Me.” This is the highest instruction of a nature that expects us to evince a potentiality that has to be drawn out, because to fix ourselves in something else is a procedure not known to us in our daily life. We cannot fix ourselves in another thing; we are fixed in our own selves only. How could we be another thing? It is not possible. In fact, the very nature of the ego, the so-called self-assertive principle, is the adamant assertion of itself in contradistinction with anything external to it and a refusal to associate itself with anybody else.

=========================================================================================

Continued

=========================================================================================