by
H.H. Sri Swami Chidananda
World President
The Divine Life Society
A Story from the Life of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
The Four Main Aspects of an Individual�s Life
The Sanctity of Marriage
The Home � A Sacred Place
Spiritual Guidance to Children
A Spiritual Daily Routine for the Householder
Dynamic Spirituality � Remembering God
The Curse of Fashion
The Value of Time
Some Concluding Remarks
We take up now the vital subject of how, being in the midst of worldly activities, one may yet fulfil the supreme purpose, the spiritual purpose of life on earth. While both the secular life and the spiritual life are a part of you, it is true that the spheres of the two are different, in the sense that the secular life has its sphere outside of yourself and the spiritual life has its sphere within yourself. But then, your spiritual life does have some expression outwardly also, and wherever you are, there your spiritual life has to be. If you are in a family set-up and living the work-a-day life in the busy field of worldly activity, then your spiritual life must be there. This interior life cannot be created by bringing about visible external changes in yourself or in your circumstances. You cannot live the spiritual life better in Rome than in Vancouver. You cannot be a better spiritual man if you are living at the top of a mountain than if you are living at the foot of it. Geography cannot change it. Mere changes of external form cannot really and truly affect your spiritual life, for it is the life of the soul, and wherever you are, the inner self can be looking towards God.
Even in the holiest of surroundings, the most sacred of places, right in the tabernacle of God, if your soul is not in Him, is not lifted up towards Him, then you are not in the spiritual realm at all.
A STORY FROM THE LIFE OF RAMAKRISHNA PARAMAHAMSA
In various ways, great Masters have tried to bring home this truth to seekers, and an incident comes to my mind � a very familiar story and not too ancient. It was in the life of Sri Ramakrishna, the spiritual preceptor of the famous Swami Vivekananda. In his early life, Sri Ramakrishna was a priest in a Hindu temple in Calcutta, then the Capital City of India. This temple was founded by a lady who was something of a small queen. The wife of a native ruler and a lady of immense riches, she had the temple built with a fabulous sum of money and endowed it with rich lands. She was a very devout lady in spite of her great wealth and affluence. Apart from her concern of looking after her property, her life was spiritual. Occasionally, she would drop in at the temple at the time of worship and sit in the sanctum. Sri Ramakrishna was a young priest at that time, perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five years of age, and on this occasion, this great lady having purified herself with a bath in the Ganges, was sitting just inside the sanctum, meditating. The worship came to a certain stage where the Deity had to be hymned with praises and glorification and, just before Sri Ramakrishna was about to burst into a song, this lady said, "Would you please sing this particular song?" and he said "Yes" and started hymning the Divine Mother. As he was singing, suddenly, he was seen to stop, turn to this great lady and give her a resounding slap on the back. And he just said, "What! Here too!" That was all and he recommenced singing. There were armed guards nearby who had followed this lady to the temple, and some of the highest officials of the temple, and all were simply stunned. Some started to tremble and one or two were thinking, "Now this man�s life has come to a close. Perhaps she will order him to be bound up immediately"; but much to their surprise, just as though she were a daughter being chastised by her father, she suddenly became docile and kept quiet and began intently to attend to the song. When the song was over, the service proceeded and, at the end of the service, she came out as if nothing had happened. The officials and the guards were just waiting and wondering, "What is going to happen now?" And the superintendent asked her, "Have you any orders? I observed what happened, but I could not step inside the sanctum, and so I could not do anything". The queen simply said, "No. There are no orders". Later on, her son-in-law, who was managing the temple on her behalf, came to hear of this incident and asked her about it. She said: "He (Ramakrishna) was perfectly right. I had asked him to hymn the Divine Mother, because it was the Mother who was enshrined there, and while he was singing, I was thinking of a law-suit coming off tomorrow at the City High Court about the estate and was worrying about it. I was not thinking of anything else � the Divine Mother or the song he was singing in Her praise. It was the law-suit which was occupying my mind, and so I had to be pulled up and he did it...It was not really he who did it, but it was the Divine Mother who did it". So this lady, even when she was in the temple, was not really in the temple, but was in the Law Court. It is what you are within yourself that determines whether you are leading a spiritual life or a worldly life, and not the place you are in. That gives the secret of living a Yogic life in and through the world.
Everything can become Yogic if you spiritualize your life, and the method of spiritualizing life has been expounded in the most glorious way in the most sacred scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Yoga is union with the Divine, and if you live your life in constant inner union with the Divine through a link of great devotion to Him, through a link of genuine love for the Supreme, then whatever you may do, wherever you may be, and in whatever manner you may be living, you are living a life of Yoga: for, you are living with God and you are at one with God in your inner life.
Such a life of at-oneness with God, such a life of conscious effort to be for ever united with Him in love and devotion, and an awareness that the whole of this life is meant for totally consummating or perfecting such union � that is Divine Life. It is a life of Yoga. If you are consciously trying all the time to reach out towards Him in spirit, to draw nearer and nearer to Him day by day, then you are living a life of Yoga, no matter what shape your external life might take.
This spirit, then, is the most important factor in living a Yogic life. This spirit is the most essential factor, which makes a life spiritual. In the light of this, we have to consider what those factors are which we can include in our daily family life which will enable us to be united with God in the interior of our being.
THE FOUR MAIN ASPECTS OF AN INDIVIDUAL�S LIFE
Of course, we take it for granted that the first thing is to be conscious of one�s purpose in life. Ever be conscious of why you are living. Ever be conscious of what purpose you are to fulfil in life. That is the most important thing. Know that the whole meaning of life is the utilizing of its every moment to attain the supreme purpose.
You are already aware of the spiritual goal in life, knowing that in God alone true peace and happiness can be had, that in God alone all the imperfections of this mortal existence can be overcome, and that in God alone all sorrow can be transcended and the state of eternal life, immortality, freedom and fearlessness can be had. Knowing this, there has already been created in you a great urge and aspiration to live the spiritual life so as to have the Supreme Attainment here and now � in this very body. To such a person as you, when living a busy family life, difficulties come in the way; and the greatest is that so many activities clutter up your day-to-day life that there seems to be no time for the essential exercise of the spirit in the way of devotion, in the way of prayer and worship. This is one great obstacle, but it is not a very serious one, nor is it the main one.
The main obstacle is constituted by the numerous duties of your worldly life, of your secular life, which you have to fulfil. Why? Because the whole of life�s set-up is economic and one has to work to earn one�s livelihood. Gone are the days of inherited properties and paternal wealth, and one has to work, and this is the dominant aspect of the secular life. The secondary aspect is the domestic life. It is from the home that one goes to the professional field, day after day, and it is to home again that one comes back after the day�s work is done. The third aspect is that as a responsible member in a community, one has certain responsibilities of social life to attend to � such as club life, meeting friends, etc. Lastly, each one has one�s own personal, individual life.
The personal, individual life is the basis. The individual aspect of your life is the most important to you. Next comes the family life or the domestic life, where there are the different relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, etc. Then comes the professional life. It is much less important than the individual life and the family life. In fact, it is the least important, though it is indispensable from the point of view of money. The professional life has to be gone through, but it does not have any serious significance for the true life of the individual � except in some extreme cases when the profession happens to be that of a hangman or a military man who has to destroy people, and then, serious ethical and spiritual problems are created. But, for the vast majority of people, the professional side does not have any special impact upon the spiritual and the ethical side of life.
Now, in the four aspects of an individual�s life that we have enumerated, how are we to ensure that spiritual idealism is given the first position?
Householders should not forget even for a moment that marriage is a sacred thing. The sanctity of married life has to be realized in all its fullness and in all its seriousness. Marriage is a sacrament. It is not just the union of two bodies. That is the least important part of it. The husband and the wife should not think there is absolutely no love above their physical life. There is a love. Marriage is the bringing together by God (through some mysterious law which operates in this universe) of two souls in this vast, vast phenomenon called life � in this vast stream of existence where countless millions of souls are moving in their individual planes of spiritual evolution towards the Divine. Through the Grace of God, through the Divine Will, and through the operation of certain laws that govern this universal life, two souls are brought together. That is the meaning of marriage.
Through the coming together of these two souls, God means an important process to be worked out and that is the sharing of the spiritual impulse between the two. What they have earned, what they have learned, and their spiritual potential � the husband and the wife are to share. The husband is to enrich the spiritual life of the wife and the wife is to enrich the spiritual life of the husband, and both are to go hand-in-hand towards the Supreme Attainment of the Divine Consciousness. That is the true, inner meaning of family life. Marriage is sacred. It is not to be treated lightly. It is not to be considered in a vulgar sense. Marriage is an alliance, which is for something more than mere physical enjoyment, for something more than even the all-important purpose of the propagation of the race (though, to a limited extent, this is also a purpose of marriage). The offsprings of the husband and the wife are also to be spiritual beings, because they are other souls coming into this earth-plane to work out their own evolution. It is therefore, the sacred duty of the husband and the wife to provide an ideal home and the proper initial impulse to these souls that come as their children. The children are to be held in trusteeship for a while until they grow up and go out into the world. The growth and development of the children will be in accordance with their own spiritual nature, with their own spiritual evolution, with their own Karma which they have brought with them; yet, the mother and the father can give a great deal from their own lives to the initial spiritual unfoldment of their children until the children attain a stage when they can themselves mind their further spiritual evolution. If healthy spiritual ideas are implanted in the young minds from the early age, they are bound to sprout forth at a later stage and bring blessedness to the children.
And, as the children are to be brought up to respect the law of celibacy, of continence, until they are actually married, so the husband and the wife should adhere to the law of continence and celibacy; and for them, this law should operate in the form of a strict moderation of marital life. Marital life should be based upon self-control, not upon indulgence. Then, the wife should regard the husband as the only partner and vice versa. The wife should not have any other male and she should not think of any other man, but should be devoted to her husband; no thought of any other man should ever cross her mind. All the rest of humanity should be to her like children � she is the great Mother. The husband must have the vow, which Rama had � the vow of the single spouse. That means that the thought of another woman will never enter his mind. To him, the only woman is his wife and their marriage ties are sacred. In this way, the whole family set-up becomes sacred and holy, and the interior life of the spirit goes on unhampered. There is nothing in the exterior life of the being to injure the spiritual life. There is nothing in the exterior life � either in the family life or in one�s personal life � to hold back or obstruct the spiritual life.
And thus, both husband and wife go in perfect harmony, and their lives, on the dual wings of exterior activity and interior prayerfulness, go to the ultimate blessed state of supreme God-consciousness � Divine Realization. Blessedness becomes theirs, in and through their family life, wherever they are.
The home should be known to be a sacred place. The home is to be a sort of counterbalancing factor for all the bustle, for all the restless activity, of your daily professional life. The moment you leave home and go into your professional activity, your whole mind, your entire personality, is brought out. You are to be active. You are to give your attention to things of this world and, therefore, your recollectedness is lost. You are brought away from your centre so that your inner spiritual closeness to God is completely lost when you go into your professional activity � your day-to-day life. Now, when you come back home, the home life is meant to be an effective counterbalancing factor. In the home, you are "Self-centred", you are recollected, you are in God. So the entire atmosphere of the home should be pervaded by a sense of God�s presence. You should feel God in every nook and corner of your home. It should be a place where, the moment you enter, the mind, which in the morning was brought out forcibly due to the secular professional activities, is once again brought back into its own. It finds rest and peace in God. God should be the centre of the home. You should not feel, "This house is mine. This home is mine"; but rather, "This is the abode of God, and here I am privileged to pause, and here I am privileged to work out my salvation, work out my liberation". This should be the attitude of both husband and wife, and it is in this attitude that the children should be raised.
The home atmosphere should not be made vulgar and the home should not be a place which is sort of a show-piece, where you just show off your opulence or show off your superior tastes to others or show off your pride of possessions � it should not be that. Neither should it be a place where a sensual type of entertainment is indulged in, with people throwing cocktail parties, with people getting half-drunk, with jazzy music, with noise and bustle and card-play. The sanctity of the home atmosphere, the sacredness and the holiness of the home atmosphere, is of paramount importance. The home should always be kept sacred. This is essential. If the spiritual atmosphere of the home also is destroyed, then how can you find your spiritual centre? If outside there is nothing to be found, and when you come home, it is worse than the outside, then how can you build a spiritual life? This way your spiritual life is destroyed by your own hand and this should not be.
However, this spiritualization of the home atmosphere should not be done in an eccentric fashion or in the manner of a fad or a fetish, marking you off as a superior person, way above your neighbours, but it should be graciously and simply accomplished with a spiritual naturalness adorned with humility and with thanks to God for the gift of this awareness. In the home, there should be nothing secular. In the home, everything should be spiritual. In the home, everything should be Yogic. There is enough of materialism, enough of forgetfulness and heedlessness of God all around you outside; so why should you add to it and let the home atmosphere also become vitiated? Keep God intact in the home. Let every atom in the atmosphere of the home be full of holiness, and do all that you can in order to maintain the atmosphere of the home. Keep it sacred. Keep it sanctified. Always feel the home to be a place where you can get very close to God.
SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE TO CHILDREN
The training of the children comes next. It is a great and onerous responsibility of the parents. You are only the trustees of these souls and have no permanent connection with them � the children whom God has given to you � and you should try to do what you can in the little time they pass through your hands to touch them and make their lives more radiant for their having come to you. Therefore, the proper training of children is one of the most onerous duties, and if this is done in the attitude of being privileged to be the parent of His own children, then everything you do towards your children becomes part of your Karma Yoga, becomes part of your own spiritual unfoldment. For, by giving to them the spiritual impulse, the spiritual life, by your own ideal lives, you become the partaker of God�s life, because you fulfil the great gospel of Karma Yoga, viz., selfless activity without attachment, with only love in your heart, in order to do some good to others. If you train them along the path, which will take them to their eternal welfare, to true blessedness, then that is the highest bestowal that one person can confer upon another in this earth-plane.
Children are imitators. The great bestowal upon them, therefore, is the bestowal of the inspiration of your personal example. This is your great duty. The parents at home have to be ideal. Their speech, their actions in all situations, their behaviour with each other, their conduct, their behaviour in relation to their neighbours, their general behaviour � if these factors are ideal and based upon virtue and ethically perfect, then they do not have to give anything else to their children. The children get all their education just by basking under the radiance of the parental influence. This is the great Yoga of the home: to give to children the ideal atmosphere and the ideal example. It is worth more than anything else that can be given to children, such as good clothes, good education � which are all things which touch but the superficial aspects of these souls that are under your care.
There is no such thing as �starting too early� for your children. They may start even from the time they are one-year old. Modern wives pride themselves on disciplining the children, and even when the children are three months old, their mothers exclaim: "Oh, she knows when to expect her food. She won�t whimper before that hour. She knows everything � when to cry, when not to cry; when to accept feedings and when not to accept; and if it is given before time by some baby-sitter, she will refuse it. You see, she has been trained". When you pride yourself on the training of children as regards feeding habits, why not train them right from the start in the spiritual line also? You can train them even before they are born. Even when they are within you, you can send towards these children all holy thoughts, inspiring spiritual vibrations, spiritual ideas about God, about prayer, about love; then a part of that nature will be imbibed even by the unborn child. In this way, you can influence the children beneficially right from the very beginning.
Let the little child watch the family in prayer. In such prayer, the whole family should be gathered together, and if a guest is staying with the family, then the guest also should join in. There should be a separate hour set aside for such worship and devotion in the morning and again in the evening. The day should not commence without this one hour. The creation of this time is in your own hands. It is in retiring early to bed and not being glued to TV. This is one of the things I would like to say � that to a great extent the spiritual life of children is being destroyed by the carelessness of their parents. Parents never care what the children do as long as the latter do not bother them. That is all they want; they just do not want to be bothered with their children. If they do not want to be bothered with them, if they do not want to care for their children, if they do not want to shoulder the responsibility of training their children, why did they bring them forth at all? They should not have had any children. They should have controlled themselves. Let people marry and live like celibates. Let them not bring forth a human child. To bring forth a child and not to care for its development, particularly its ethical and spiritual development...there is no sin greater than this. For, such parents have betrayed a trust. Out of their own volition, they have created a trust and betrayed it. This should not be done. The Law of Karma says retribution is unfailing.
In the modern house, what do you see? Most of the children develop their own propensities, not from the example of the father and the mother, but from what they see on the TV screen. This is warping their souls and it is addicting them to hang on to pictures that flicker upon the screen and to completely lose their individual personality. They then have no time for anything else, but are always fascinated by TV.
A SPIRITUAL DAILY ROUTINE FOR THE HOUSEHOLDER
Each householder should have an ideal daily routine. The home life should not be left to itself, but taken care of. In addition to those unexpected things that come up every day � a visit of someone, a telephone call, an invitation to go out with someone � every one of you should have an accepted basic programme, a basic schedule for your daily life, which should include an hour of prayer in the morning and an hour of prayer in the evening. The prayer hour might include the reading of scriptural texts, the reading of sacred and inspiring spiritual books, a few minutes of quiet, indrawn meditation, a few minutes of actually articulated prayer, inspiring prayer. The prayer can be spontaneous; it does not necessarily have to come out of some book. Or it can be both, as there are some very inspiring short prayers in the Gospel and also in some other books. The children should also be trained in this way.
There should also be some actual act of external worship. After all, we are embodied creatures and we wish to exercise our bodies also in devotion. When you are in a state of worship, the body also should take on the attitude of worship. You should light a candle, burn a little incense, bow before the Deity, offer supplication, ask Him to enlighten you, to fill your heart with virtue, fill your heart with divine love, goodness and selflessness, and then, bowing low and with genuflection, kneel, press down with your forehead. In this way, you have to humble yourself in the presence of God. Then, as the body genuflects, prostrates and humbles itself, the influence of those little acts has a chastening effect upon the mind. We cannot become completely heedless to these reactions of the body upon the mind and the mind upon the inner spirit. Therefore, each day, you should have an hour when you have scope for the exercise of all these several aspects of your being � for the exercise of the body, the heart and the feelings in prayer; for the exercise of the mind and the intellect in study, reflection and enquiry; and for the exercise of the spirit in inner contemplation, silence, indrawnness and meditation.
Each member of the family should have a private altar. The mother should have her own nook or little corner, where she has her own little prayer, little conversation with God, little asking for guidance, little intimate communion with God. The husband, likewise, should have a little altar for himself, and if this cannot be had, at least he must have some time for himself, when he communes with the Maker individually. And the children should be trained right from the very beginning to have such separate little corners for themselves. Just as they have one corner for their toys, another for their books, a third for their pets, so they must have a corner for their own communion with the Most High, and if this habit is developed from childhood, then later on, they will be able to have their own independent spiritual life.
DYNAMIC SPIRITUALITY � REMEMBERING GOD
Throughout the house, you may have any number of external symbols, which bring to you the thought of God. Perhaps tastefully framed mottoes: "ALL LIFE IS SACRED", "GOD IS HERE NOW", "BE GOOD, DO GOOD", "BE KIND, BE PURE", "SPEAK THE TRUTH", "NEVER HURT THE FEELINGS OF OTHERS", "SEE GOD IN ALL FACES", "TRUTH IS GOD", "GOD IS LOVE", etc. � and also pictures. Every day, when the householder starts from home for his work, he should have five minutes of prayer, when he should say: "Now, Oh Lord, from this Blessed Abode of Thine, where I am privileged to pass my days, I go out to worship Thee through my bodily activities, through my work. May all that I do today with body and mind be accepted by Thee as my worship, as my Karma Yoga, as my dynamic prayer". Only after uttering this little prayer should the householder leave his home.
When he approaches the office, he should do so with a worshipful attitude. Be you a steno-typist or a salesman or a drugstore assistant, be you a doctor or a lawyer or a school teacher, be you a carpenter or a mason, whatever you are, the place of work to which you go day after day to exercise your vocation or profession is to be to you a sacred temple of God and the work that you do should be the worship offered to the all-pervading Presence which is at home, which is within, which is everywhere, and which is also at the place of your work.
If you are a workshop man, at your bench you must be working with God. You must feel God working with you and, now and then, about once an hour, you should renew this spirit. It should not be monotonous and mechanical and it should not be dull. You must renew the spirit by: "Oh Lord, accept this work as my worship of Thee. All glory be to Thee. It is Thy Grace that makes me work. This work I offer to Thee as flowers offered at the altar".
If you work in a prison, or if you are a lawyer and have to work, as it were, "on the edge of a sword", then it is very, very difficult. It is extremely difficult to be a lawyer and not to utter a falsehood, to be a policeman and not to take bribes. In such work, people have to be pitied, because they are wasting this great thing called human life. They themselves are most unfortunate, because they become enmeshed in a set-up where, even though they do not desire to do so, they do things, which are unethical, unrighteous. If one is a conscientious spiritual seeker, then these professions should be given up. Or else, you should walk with a great deal of caution and with great devotion to God, constantly praying to God to keep you on the straight path. Everything has to be offered to God in worship, and worship cannot be rotten, worship cannot be crooked, worship cannot be impure, and therefore, the one rule that should govern your life is that it should be honest, based upon truth. All your activities should be based upon truth, honesty and purity. Then those activities, when offered to God in worshipfulness, become Yoga. They become Yoga anywhere, in Paris, in London, in New York, in Vancouver. The time or the age in which you dwell � be it the twentieth century or the twenty-first century � matters little. The place where you dwell � whether it is in the West or the East � matters little. What is of importance is that you look at all work as worship and see that all your activities are guided by the principles of righteousness and truth and purity. Thus your whole life becomes pervaded by the spirit of Yoga � your personal life, your home life and your office or professional life.
During your lunch hour, try to snatch fifteen minutes for silent interior prayer and inward meditation. Get away by yourself, and if conditions are such that you cannot do so, then try to get behind a newspaper in a corner somewhere, and while pretending to read the paper, contemplate upon God for those moments. Or pretend to take a nap, close your eyes and go into prayerfulness � but do not actually take a nap! Forget the world, forget life, work, body, everything, for that time, being wholly intent upon God. This is a dynamic process. If you dip into your innermost being now and then, say twenty times a day, or once in every half an hour, for just one minute, that is enough. It is a great life-transforming process. It is dynamic spirituality and the transformation that will come upon you will in no wise be less than the spiritual transformation in a contemplative monk, for you are doing a task which is even greater than his, for he has all the proper facilities and, therefore, it is natural and easy for him to go into God. But with everything against you � when the whole atmosphere, your whole environment, all the factors that go to make up your life are totally material, externalized, and grossly secular � if, in the midst of all that, you have this thought of interiorness once in a while, then the token of your love for God is so earnest, so deeply genuine, that the return for it is tenfold, one hundredfold. Therefore, try to have little minutes of deep and intent God-thought periodically during the course of your busy day. Somehow or the other, connect everything with God. Whatever you do, do it for His love, and try to speak to Him in and through your activities.
If you are a waiter in a restaurant, when you are serving someone, see God in the person who has given the order, and when taking the dish to him, take it worshipfully, as if you are taking an offering to the altar of God. For the time being, let the table of your customer become your altar. In that way, you have to connect your every activity with God-thought and let devotion fill the heart. (This is not to be mistaken for a mere emotion, or just sentimentality, but implies actually a steadfast state of genuine worshipfulness. Strength, and not weakness, is the criterion of true devotion.)
Along with all this, live a simple life. It is in the simple life that mind moves upon a straight path without wavering. Whereas, it is dispersed and scattered if life is made too complex and too much filled with an accumulation of objects. Have a simple life and do not be too concerned about your physical existence, about care of your body, about your beauty, your dress.
I will tell you a simple truth: fashion is a curse. Fashion is a curse and fashion is slavery. It is slavery subtly imposed upon you by shrewd people who have products to sell. If you have some intelligence, you will know a very deep and significant fact: the manufacturers of dress and of all things fashionable will never keep any particular style or model constant for more than one year. They will surely bring in a change, a new model, and a new fashion each year, attempting to persuade you that items, which you have purchased the previous year, are worthless. Do you see the absurdity of it? Slavery to fashion complicates one�s life beyond measure. The simple life keeps the heart simple, the mind simple, and you are able to give your mind and heart to God. In a complicated life, the mind and the heart are dispersed and the essential interior life is lost.
Realize the value of time. Utilize every minute, and with great niggardliness, try to salvage every minute and add it to your spiritual life. Do not have the habit of gossip � genteel gossip. It is one of the social qualifications � when two persons are together, they must have some gentle backchat about a third person. If that is done, you are destroying your own life, you are wasting time. Life is time, and time is verily life. If you just fritter away precious minutes and hours in loose chatter and gossip and a little genteel scandal mongering, it means you are robbing yourself of the most precious thing in life � the rare opportunity to attain God.
You should try to develop a little backbone. You should not be afraid to be different. You should not think: "If I am like this, if my house is run in a certain way, if the neighbours peep in, what will they think?" Why should you care what they would think? Let them think what they like. What do you care for: the opinion of God and the opinion of your own conscience or the opinion of others? Have a backbone. Have the courage to be unique in certain respects and dare to be out-of-the-ordinary. Do not think you should always conform. You must conform in the things that are necessary for the social well being of all people; but in the interior life, you need not conform to anyone. Do that which you think is best in the eyes of God. You must have a certain degree of independent thinking and arrange your family life and your interior life in a way which you think is best and is in the light of the highest idealism.
This, in short, is the method by which you can bring the spiritual element into all of your life. It does not matter if you are of the West or of the East, if you are ancient or modern. Everyone, wherever he is, can touch his innermost being with this attitude of worshipfulness and base his life on the principle of ever moving towards God. In all that you do, move towards God. Let all actions be of such nature that will bring you nearer to God.
Develop virtue as a rule in your life. Let virtue be the criterion with which you judge all your thoughts, all your actions, and all your speech. Is it virtuous or not? That should be the yardstick to guide you in your life. And the principle should be to move towards God � ever and ever.
Items that can go into the family schedule are some moments of calm reflection and exchange of thought between members of the family, some moments of common spiritual reading, moments of hymns and songs together. All families should have a daily custom of singing together, hymns and sacred songs learned by heart.
Always have the principle of offering food to God first and then alone partaking of it � the saying of grace.
While doing her housework, the wife should dedicate everything that she does to God � washing the dishes, mopping the floor, and preparing meals, everything. She should say, "O Lord, for Thy love, for Thy glory � this is worship". And the hand should do its task with love, so that you know the heart and the hand are both dedicating to God.
Then, develop an ideal relationship with your neighbour. You must be a good neighbour, and all the family members should try to develop themselves, into good Samaritans. If there is any distress, if there is any opportunity to help, even if help is not asked, if you feel that a certain person is in difficulty, without revealing yourself, you should help. There are various ways, if you want to exercise the spirit of charity and the ideal of the good Samaritan. You can do it, even today. These things should always be uppermost in your life. So, you worship God and fulfil the ideal of Yoga, of compassion and goodness and selflessness, even through your dealings with your fellow-beings.
Let the weekends for the family be periods of recreation as well as spiritual re-creation. Why should there be a craze to go somewhere on weekends? Why should children want to get away? If the home atmosphere has become so ideal, so beautiful, so full of sweetness and happiness, then on weekends, no one in the family will want to go anywhere at all. You will love every minute you live in the home, within the family, and you will not want to get away. When the family atmosphere is totally vitiated and there is no faith in God, there is no faith in His presence, when there is no devotion, when there is no love and charity, no understanding between husband and wife, between parents and children, then the children have no good example, and when this is the case, they become disobedient and careless. But if the home is ideal, with a harmonious atmosphere, with love for God as the centre of your family life, then not one of the family will want to get away from home; and the time spent at home will be solid week-ends full of spiritual gain where you put by for yourself wealth that no moth can eat away, no rust can cause to perish, and no thief can take from you. Even nuclear bombs cannot take away the spiritual wealth gained thus from living a Yogic life.
That, I think, sums up, more or less, the whole structure of a Yogic way of life in the home and in the family.
Footnote
This article has been extracted from the book "The Path Beyond Sorrow" which is a compilation of a series of lectures delivered by His Holiness Swami Chidananda in Canada in the year 1960.
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