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Token Act – Its Various Aspects

 

June 14, 2002

  • The theory behind the Token Act is the universe is represented by an act - the macrocosm in the microcosm.
  • The measure of success in a token act can be fully repeated in any act of its character however great it is in its other aspects such as volume.
  • One who organises a school function under the orders of his boss successfully can organise a national event under another boss. What repeats is the organisation under orders.
  • Acts can be classified under type, character, complexity, responsibility, quality, quantity, volume, etc.
  • They can be symbolically placed in concentric circles according to their type.
  • The above theory of token act holds good to an act of ONE type irrespective of its width. Greater width requires greater energy.
  • The law can be put in both ways:
    1. One who can execute a small act can do a big one.
    2. One who cannot execute a small act cannot execute a big one.
  • As the acts are typical, each part of a whole act is also typical as they are representative and characteristic.
  • One who is unpunctual here will be unpunctual there.
  • The above theory when considered seriously can be startling, as it means one who has leadership in a small act, capable of patience and perfection and can energise that act to grow in quality and quantity is one who can rise endlessly in public life as long as he is able to generate higher energies. This is true.
  • The young man who bought a losing concern for $ 5000 and turned it into a profitable one later made GM steal a march over Ford and presided over it for decades. Sloan was great because he proved his mettle in that Token Act.
  • Each person is organised at some level of efficiency now and he is successful at that level. That is true.
  • The purpose of a Token Act is to raise his level of efficiency to a higher level - say 10 fold - and test whether he has acquired that qualification.
  • Among the many qualifications demanded for this venture, one important criterion is it should be his own choice and aspiration.
  • What will achieve this is not desire but a decision that is determination.
  • I have not met such a real case and so far no one in my knowledge opted for such a venture, though there is unanimous desire on the part of anyone who hears this idea.
  • There were two instances of spectacular success where the ACT revealed almost all its characteristic in its real force of truth. One broke at the alter of competition and other petered out when the social pressure under which it succeeded was withdrawn. Each lasted around 4 years of magnificence. In the first case, the expansion was 18-fold and in the other 15-fold.
  • There are several examples of eager aspirants who ended up as non-starters.

- One person is enthusiastic as long as the inspirer is around.

- Another man has an ideal of work and is up in arms against seeking accomplishment.

- A third is one who is fully detached from life and has a laudable goal of NOT doing anything.

- There is one who lends herself outwardly but waits some other force to accomplish.

- I was fortunate enough to run into a most suitable candidate who is eager, intelligent but is timid and has opinions about the outcome. Such opinions can be counter-productive or create negative responses.

- Other cases may be around a hundred who have accomplished their first major result merely on the strength of the first inspiration. Even that is too great for them. They simply drop out.

  • This project is to be of direct practical use to those who aspire not to change the basic views of people.
  • One major component of this ACT is the 120 levels of values implementation of twelve values at ten levels. It is the least part of it but can yield the results in a greater measure than expected. This is to learn the process, not to achieve results. Early results in a great measure help lose the client.
  • In those who do seek this knowledge, it can be seen that life will move towards them, as the Senatorship came to Truman. His becoming the President and later being elected to that post were indicated by life coming to him. It is worth taking note of what comes and how it comes.
  • Presence of abundant energy, determination to accept a direction of that energy, native organisation that exists, availability of result producing skills, perfection in any one of the values are conducive conditions for this.
  • In the absence of any of these, burning aspiration to acquire all of them is welcome.
  • Suppose someone around me wants to embark on such an adventure, there are several preliminary things he can patiently execute. 

- Meet those who know enough about it and see where they stand, compare yourself with their strengths and weaknesses and place yourself on your own scale.

- In the last 2 or 3 years, at least 200 articles on various themes were written and in any of them points relating to this theme can be found. To patiently collect them and compare one's own equipment against those requirements and the existing aspiration to acquire the non-existing ones is the minimum required of the aspirant.

  • All that we so learn reduces to one central principle:

Maintain the equilibrium of all forces all the time and the decision on the right side.

  • As the situations are numerous and the possible decisions are equally numerous, one expects to be in a bewildering situation all the time. It is not true.
  • Consider or study any major work you have successfully concluded in your life and from the point of view of this ACT cull out detailed points of action. There is a common sense there. Do not part from it. One question may arise. That act did not explode ten times. The common sense is the ballast. Energy that expands the act ten times comes from the expansive attitudes at each moment -- selflessness, the other man's point of view, long term quality as against quantity, etc. Values release the energy that can multiply the results. All outgoing values are good.
  • It can be summed up as

Perfect common sense + Outgoing expansive

     actions                         values

  • Presence of clumsiness, errors, absence of orderliness or organisation, unskilled fingers, dirt, dust, loudness, mercenary values and all of that type must be removed before we begin.
  • Introduce aspiration where there is none. Replace aspiration by consecration and consecration by surrender.
  • To do a work as work makes it wearisome. To do it as duty quickly frustrates. Look at the work in the overall context, suddenly you will love to do it. It is aspiration. This is one way of releasing aspiration.
  • When aspiration is present, it is interesting to do the work. For whose sake? It is either for the sake of work or for ourselves.
  • To do the work for the sake of the inner Divine is consecration.

We often work for our benefit, prestige, in war times for patriotism, for the nation, for the sake of goodness, humanity. In each case, it is consecrated to profit, ego, nation, a value, etc.

  • Consecration is good but it is not surrender.*
  • Consecration aims at a result. Surrender has none.
  • If as a patriot I join the army, I may say I consecrate my life to the nation's welfare. When I join the army, I fight with my capacity. I am there. In surrender it won't be there.
  • In an act there is the knowledge, energy and the doing of it
  • In surrendering my act to Mother, it is not my capacity that executes it, but my capacity is withdrawn and Her energy enters to do the act.
  • One can surrender all the 3 or part of it. Surrender can be made more and more perfect and it is endless.
  • Withdrawing my energy, Her energy enters; withdrawing my capacity, Her capacity does it, withdrawing my knowledge, Her knowledge expresses in the act.
  • In choosing a Token Act, we aim at learning the process. To surrender that aim is to add one more dimension to the success of the act.
  • To perfect surrender, one should not choose a Token Act. It is to take Surrender to fuller heights. One lies in wait, without taking initiative. To him such an act can come by itself.
  • To surrender an initiative and let an act come to one is difficult in the extreme, but after the act has come to maintain the attitude of surrender is to live in the Ever Present, doing Yoga, growing in one's consciousness non-stop, moving to Supermind. Let us do as much as is possible.
  • The Token Act I have been speaking about is mostly in the outer work and a little in the inner consciousness.
  • It can be taken entirely to the inner arena thus giving it another dimension of importance. Theoretically it can further be taken OUTSIDE as entirely fashioned inside. Its final dimension is when the dichotomy of inner and outer is removed and all becomes ONE. Now let us go inside.
  • Work outside is physical movement. Work inside can be a movement of thought or emotion or sensation. It can be at the end a movement of consciousness or a consciousness that is moveless.
  • Organisation outside is a system on paper; inside is an organisation of consciousness which is a Value not in work but to be honoured inside.
  • Accomplishment outside is material, a physical result that is tangible.
  • Inside it is a status of consciousness that does not SEEK even for its own results.
  • To plan INSIDE is NOT to think, but to FEEL happy in not planning or thinking.
  • Outside one lives, inside one IS.
  • The very best attitude outside is NOT to take initiative and await for work to come to you seeking your execution.
  • The very best MOTIVE inside is not to be still and unmoving but to await MOTHER'S promptings to act as SHE wants us to act.
  • Such an inner Token Act arises in its context when the outer act is completed. Not till then.
  • To carry the essential knowledge of the process acquired in the outer act, to go in and dwell on the inner values till the MOTIVE learns to surrender and be STILL in a stillness that is Force which lies in wait ever ready to ACT where action itself is the ACT, energy itself is the ACT.

Scope of Token Act

  • A Token Act is conceived so that one will learn to do any work he chooses in such a way as to let the infinite in it emerge which means the results will be a thousand-fold.
  • So far I have been considering it at the minimum scope of vast results and am content even if the results are just ten-fold.
  • If people all over the world can raise their productivity ten-fold, surely the world will be a better place to live in. Poverty will be abolished straight away and along with it much of ignorance and disease, the three major curses of humanity.
  • As the abolition of poverty is aimed at by the abolition of social ego whose main attractions are money, woman and Fear, the results will be more complete than expected.
  • To ensure sustained results, I insist on the process, not the result.
  • The real SCOPE of Acts, one of which we here make a token, is all life which is the field of yoga.
  • Should one widen the scope of Token ACT, he must move on two lines: 1. from a token act to all acts and, 2. from process to essence.
  • Moving from results to process one becomes a scientist; moving to essence one becomes a Yogi. The virtue of sticking to results, if there is a virtue, the results show once or a few times and level off at twice the level we started with which devotees adopt unconsciously.
  • If the result is in the gross material plane, the process is in the subtle plane and the essence lies in the causal plane.
  • As the Spirit of Time is pervaded with scientific inquiry, I make myself bold enough to ask for it. It is the logical next step to educated affluent humanity. It is to move from the physical result to mental understanding.
  • As the world is aspiring to prosperity, and man is evolving to a mental life that is rational, appeal to a process or learning the process of work lies well within the realm of life man is in.
  • If not in the full details, moving to essence can either be illustrated theoretically or through one example for those who emerge out of the present experiment successfully.

* There is a chapter on Self-consecration and another on Surrender the Gita's way, in Synthesis of Yoga.



story | by Dr. Radut