Immortal – In Gita Verse 2.51 By thus engaging in devotional service to the Lord, great sages or devotees free themselves from the results of work in the material world. In this way they become free from the cycle of birth and death and attain the state beyond all miseries [by going back to Godhead].
From this verse of Krishna first let’s understand the word ‘Devotional Service’. Here Krishna says that be creative in any act so it becomes divine.
Work is a necessary part of your transformation. Meditation takes you into, beyond-the-mind, but it starts cutting roots from the body-mind, and you begin to be with a wholesome integrated personality.
People need to change the attitude that exists about work, particularly in the Western mind. Meditation should be part of the work, not separate from it.
Work and relaxation are not contradictory. In fact, the more you put yourself into work the deeper you can go into relaxation. So both are important. The harder you work the deeper you can relax. Work is valuable. It will bring humbleness and silence. People should feel that their work is something very special, and that whatever work they do is respectable.
Anything can be creative – you bring that quality to the activity. Activity itself is neither creative nor uncreative. You can paint in an uncreative way. You can sing in an uncreative way. You can clean the floor in a creative way. You can cook in a creative way.
Creativity is the quality that you bring to the activity you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach – how you look at things.
So the first thing to be remembered: don’t confine creativity to anything in particular. A man is creative – and if he is creative, whatsoever he does, even if he walks, you can see in his walking there is creativity. Even if he sits silently and does nothing, even non-doing will be a creative act. Buddha sitting under the Bodhi Tree doing nothing is the greatest creator the world has ever known.
Krishna’s meaning of ‘Devotional service’ means bring the quality of creativity in your act. Then you will be able to see life as a whole and not as compartmental.
How to look at life as a whole and not as compartmental, not as death and birth: There is nothing like death or birth. Right now forget about science, spirituality etc. Look around you when you sow the seed and from that tree grows. Now you can say that seed is dead or you can say tree is born. We look at life in compartments, if we can look in totality then you will say that neither seed is dead nor tree has born it’s just change of form. Again when the tree merges and becomes seed. This whole cycle is in front of us.
To see everything in totality we need to be creative in our act. When you are creative in your act means neither the objective world or subjective world is different for you. In your act both are present. Exactly like a seed is an unmanifested tree and a tree is a manifested seed.
Be a giver. Share whatsoever you can! And remember, I am not making any distinction between small things and great things. If you can smile whole-heartedly, hold somebody’s hand and smile, then it is a creative act, a great creative act. Just embrace somebody to your heart and you are creative. Just look with loving eyes at somebody…just a loving look can change the whole world of a person.
Be creative. Don’t be worried about what you are doing – one has to do many things – but do everything creatively, with devotion. Then your work becomes worship. Then whatsoever you do is a prayer. And whatsoever you do is an offering at the altar.
To bring back Arjuna to his consciousness Krishna is saying that if you come back into your subjective world and see the whole war, you will find there is the birth of a tree. Right now you are seeing war from an objective world, so you are seeing death. Once you come back to the subjective world and then drop even the subjective world to see the war as a whole. Immediately you will see that everything is IMMORTAL. It is just the process and flow.
Tags: Immortal
