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Dealing with People

 

Report No.: Y7

 

For us, sadhaks, all life is yoga. This is a principle which in fact is a practice. It is our constant endeavor to convert the individual aspects of our life into items of yoga. Naturally dealing with people too should be an exercise in yoga. Let us see how an ordinary contact with a friend or meeting a laborer in work can be turned into an item of yogic discipline.

Man lives in his human consciousness, mostly in his social consciousness. The ideals of human consciousness are expressions of mental, vital, and emotional propensities seeking their satisfaction, and social consciousness attempts to honor the social realities. Yoga aims constantly at detaching the individual from his human consciousness and putting him in relationship to the Divine consciousness. To convert a social or work moment into an occasion of putting oneself in relation to the Divine is the problem. The Method is Consecration.

When a man honours a social custom, we can say his act is (unconsciously) consecrated to the social being. The act relates him to the personality of the society and by each such act he grows more into social consciousness. Similarly the meeting of a person, dealing with him, is to be entirely consecrated consciously to the inner Divine and the act done as such. Acting thus from a higher point of consciousness, we attempt to enter into relation with the Divine in the other man. If that is achieved consecration is fully effective and the work turns out to be smooth, successful, and harmonious. If the communion with the Divine in the other man is not obtained, then a consecrated act is a transaction between the Divine consciousness in us and the human consciousness in the other. There being a differential in potential of consciousness, ours at a higher level, the sadhak feels the mastery of the situation. This is the indication of right relationship with people. For a sadhak no human or social relationship should bring about a situation where he is at the mercy of others or circumstances. That means the act is not fully consecrated to the inner Divine.

If the work is not consecrated to the inner Divine and still it becomes a good success by the virtue of the personal efficiency of the sadhak, the act is a social success but a failure as sadhana.



story | by Dr. Radut