Sometimes I have been on both sides. You see I have also worked with my hands for a few years in a factory. And in those days I used to earn something like Rs.150/- a month. Then, I don't know whether you should call it luck or God's grace, or the blessings of the elders; I got into what is called a white-collar job. There also I found, that I could say with impunity, that I am working. And what did my work consist of? A few letters a day, a few contacts for sales, and to my astonishment, without doing very much, I ended up as the director of a few companies.

So when we come to this conflict between the worker or the labourer as I choose to call them, and workers as we choose to call ourselves, what is it that makes one a labourer and one a worker, or a white-collar worker? Do they not work enough to earn all that we have earned? So, very early in my life when I started asking these questions and when I heard that 'work is worship,' I used to laugh at this old English proverb. How can this work be worship and how is it worship? What is worship? So there seems to have been some misunderstanding of what worship really means; because if you can pull a hand cart and call it worship, if you work a machine eight hours a day and call it worship, and if you can sit in an air-conditioned office, dictate two letters and then have lunch at a five-star hotel and call that also worship, obviously there is something wrong.

So you see, the first law of spirituality is, "You are entitled to your daily bread; after all God gave you the stomach." If He wanted you to be stomachless and to be only a meditator, He would have made you stomachless. So obviously there is some purpose in having a stomach and the intestines and the need to eat. Give enough time for that. "What should I do with the rest of the time?" This was the question I asked my Master. He said, "Think of God." Because that is your main purpose of existence.

So my Master taught me to examine life itself and the purpose of this existence. He said, "If it was merely to live and to earn and to fill your stomach and to satisfy your urge for security and go on amassing wealth, God would have surely made you a honey bee or an ant or perhaps a squirrel. But when He made you a human being and gave you the intellect, and the willpower and the idea that there is something superior to you which has created you and which is beckoning you on to Himself, that is your true purpose." So, that was when I learnt that work can be worship if it is worshipfully applied to oneself, that is to the making of oneself.

So work can become worship only when we understand that this external work that we do is not really work. It is a means of acquiring my livelihood. The true work is that which I do on myself, to become something; like when you educate your child, the child is working furiously for its education. It is doing something to itself. When we have educated ourselves, it means that we should use that education rightly. Rightly in what way? To set my goal and to be able to achieve that goal, do whatever is necessary - work. This work has to be again internalised on myself, to become something, you see. To become what? From a human being, I have become an educated human being, now I have to become a spiritual human being.

So my Master only taught that, 'Please have a right idea of work. Like an iceberg, which is only showing 1/8th of its tip above the surface of the water, the rest is hidden; your work is also 1/8th outside, 7/8th inside. You have to become progressively more and more human, until you are totally a human being. Then work upon yourself to become progressively divinised to the highest level of perfection. This is the true work and if you do, work can become worship.'

Very often, we find some people are successful in their work, some people are not. It is not the difference in the effort. The man, who loses money in business, has also put money in business. It is not as if he did not put money in business. This man puts a lakh of rupees, that man puts a lakh of rupees. This man is also working day and night; the other one is also working day and night. So, why one loses and one does not lose? One flops in business and then, we blame God, we blame everything else. The blame should be on ourselves! Because in one case, the person must have worked without thinking of the profit! In a sense, it was Karma Yoga: "Ma phaleshu kadachana." In the other case the person was always working with a profit motive: "What will I get out of it?" Samskara and all that is secondary, you see. Because any work, which is done in the consciousness of the Master, cannot fail, whatever my samskara may be. My samskara can affect me; it cannot affect my work. And what is my work? If it is the Master's work, under no circumstances can it fail! God Himself cannot put failure in that work.

Karma Yoga has been very wrongly interpreted. It is my humble suggestion that when Lord Krishna said, "Ma phaleshu kadachana," He said, "My dear friend, if you think of the results of your actions, you will become impotent. You will worry because every result has two possibilities: success and failure. You cannot think of one without thinking of the other. There cannot be shade without there being light. So leave that to me. You go on with your work. If you are doing the right thing at the right time, how on earth can you fail to succeed?" This is the Karma Yoga law, as I understand it.

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