17 - Service

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan once said.  "The Murshid is there for the mureed." (The teacher is there to serve the pupil.) One might add, the mureed is there for the public.  That is the meaning of service.  The demand produces the supply. 

The ordeal of the fire triggers off the heroism in the fireman.  The suffering of the patient calls for the compassion of the nurse and the skill of the doctor.  The agony of the dying in the streets of Calcutta produces a Mother Teresa.  The budding genius of the child calls for the teacher to facilitate it.  The helplessness of the destitute calls for foodbanks and night shelters. The despair of the broken psyche calls for the dedicated priest or the psychotherapist.  One species may call to be serviced by another as the trees dying in the rain forests tax the skill of the ecologist to service them or the endangered species call for the ecologist to perpetuate their presence on the planet.  This is the meaning of service.

The whole planet calls out to be served and serviced; instead.  it is being more exploited than served.  There was a time when we humans took it for granted that it was our prerogative to control the planet.  Leadership is not controlling but releasing potentialities, facilitating them and coordinating them.  The reward is accessory.  When the reward becomes the objective, there is exploitation.

The trouble is that we feel our generosity runs counter to what we believe to be our most dire needs, or more so. those of our families. Moreover, we rightly are afraid that once we get ourselves involved in helping others, we shall be drawn further and further into sacrificing our needs since the demands appear to be much greater than we had at first suspected. In order to help others, one needs to hoist oneself in a position where one can help but one needs to tithe some of one's gain into lending a helping hand to those who cannot fend for themselves. In Ajmer and Rishikesh, one may find that as soon as one metes out a few rupies or chapaties, one is harassed by a solicitous crowd who may even tear one's clothes to pieces to grab what they can, so great is their hunger. Consequently, many prefer not starting this in the first place. Some even argue that one is simply perpetuating their misery by giving a pittance which could never answer their needs. Nature has a way of stemming the population explosion by pruning it at the cost of starvation.

Then there is the burnout of overstressing oneself by sheer zeal. The danger lurks in self pity that might very well brook unconscious resentment for the person one is helping, which one refuses to admit to one's conscious mind but may cause ponderous soul searchings and internal conflicts. Therefore, the cutting off point between stress and overstress must be clearly evaluated to avoid being self defeating and counterproductive. This is where Murshid's wisdom regarding balance in life proves to be a saving grace.

One should be wary of the personal satisfaction of helping as witnessed in a number of do-gooders and philanthropists. It escalates patronization. People feel indebted to one's generosity as if strings are attached to one's beneficence and it culminates in sheer crass egotism. St. Vincent de Paul, who created hospitals for the poor in France, once said that those whom you have benefitted nurture an unconscious resentment against you for the dependence in which you have placed them. Is the answer in anonymous, impersonal service? Institutional welfare with all its positive side has proven its inadequacy in dealing with the roots of human problems by merely providing palliatives.

Jemaluddin Bolling, who is one of the U.S. pioneers in foodbanks and has provided shelters for numberless people, said that the problem is deeper than just providing food and shelter to the homeless. Behind their inability to cope is a broken self-image, low self-esteem and abysmal loneliness and ejection. The real issue is helping people to convince themselves that they can do something useful by giving them a chance to find an activity that is not too challenging, yet moderately rewarding. The public services do not know how to meet that problem nor can this be institutionalized. The trouble with an impersonal system is first, that it lends itself to terrible abuses and second, it tends to take away personal incentive and effort by making people rely on the system rather than explore their resourcefulness.

It is only under stress that one's latent resourcefulness is discovered and actuated. We are living at a time when an increasing section of the public is pushed out of the active sector because of their inability to cope with the increased demands for technological skills. They do not stand a chance competing with a growing number of highly skilled people. The dejected ones are the victims of our relentless progress into automation and eventually, computing robotology. In additional, our trade union laws chase the unskilled out of the feasible brackets where unemployment is elicited.

Our affluence has created a demand; in turn, that demand is creating a supply. More and more people are sensitive to this call and are willing to help. In fact, if most people were aware of the extent of the despair of other people, they would do something about it. Unfortunately, most people do not quite know which is the beset way to make use of their services and there has been, up to the present, very little coordination between the supply and the demand. The momentous proliferation of personal computers in our time open up a whole new scope to deal with just this; to form a clearing station where people wishing to volunteer help may be brought into contact with those who need help and find out which is the most effective way of helping. This was the purpose of the Rescue Network Operation. As you know, it never really took off, except in the case of welfare, the Hope Project in Delhi and the Food bank in Atlanta, plus the efforts of quite a number of members working locally to help people unassumingly. But we never came across those who, having the skills, where able to give their time setting up a computer network.

We are living a second chapter in the unfoldment of our Sufi work where we find that quite a number of mureeds have graduated in our school to the point where they feel a need to the second step, which is to put the spiritual teaching to practice and service is the way to do it. This was the meaning of the Brotherhood activity of the Sufi Movement created by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, which so far, has never gotten off the ground completely, except in my Inter-Religious Congress, Omega Institute, and any welfare project, but here is much more that one can do. I would suggest calling it the Brother/Sisterhood activity and I suggest that Centers organize meetings in which members share ideas about creative ways of service and then spring into action.

It is not fulfilling to simply pursue one's personal advantage in life. Most evolved people need to serve a purpose beyond their own personal one in which the potentialities in their being attain fruition.
