The Bhagavad Gita’s Approach to Work-Life Balance

Seed-Like

Krishna says – The world has many attributes; God has none. God is seed-like; he is unmanifest. When God manifests himself in the form of the world he acquires attributes, and these attributes disappear when he again becomes unmanifest. Someone is a saint and another person is a thief. As saint and thief they have certain attributes, but when they, the saint and the thief, go to sleep, they are without any attributes. Neither does the saint remain a saint nor the thief remains a thief. In sleep all attributes disappear; sleep is a state without attributes. Attributes appear with the waking state; with sleep they go to sleep too. When they wake up the saint will become a saint and the thief will become a thief again. In sleep we are very close to our individuality, our innate nature; rather, we are closest to it. And in samadhi, in ecstasy, we actually attain our supreme nature, which is of the highest.

So the experience of pristine nature has no attributes, no traits whatsoever. But when self-nature manifests itself it acquires attributes. Attribute and non-attribute are not two things; they are not contradictory. They are just the ways of the manifest and the unmanifest.

Self-nature, supreme nature, has two states. One is the unmanifest state when it is in seed form, asleep, absorbed in itself. And the other is the manifest state when it takes form and attributes. Really, no manifestation can be without form and attributes; it has to have a form, a shape, a color and a speciality.

Contrast

It is like this: if you are born healthy and have never been ill, you will never be aware of your health. You cannot be, because awareness of health needs a background of disease and illness. You will have to fall ill to know that you were healthy or what health is. The other pole will be needed. Eastern esoteric science says this is why the world is, so that you can experience that you are divine. The world gives a contrast.

Go into a school, and you will see that the teacher is writing on a blackboard with white chalk. He can write on a white board too, but then it will be meaningless because it will be invisible, it won’t be seen. Only on a blackboard can one write with white chalk so that it is seen. The blackboard is a necessity for the white writing to become visible.

The world is just a blackboard, and you become visible because of it. This is an inherent polarity, and it is good. That is why in the East we have never said that the world is bad; we take it just as a school, a training. It is good because only in contrast will you be able to know your purity. When you come into the world you become identified. With identification you enter; the world starts. So you will have to fall ill to know your inner health.

This has been a basic question all over the world: Why is this world there? Why is it at all? Many answers have been given, but those answers are just superfluous. Only this attitude seems to be very deep and meaningful – that the world is just a background; without it you cannot become aware of your inner consciousness.