Selfless Service

Selfless Service and the Principles of Psychoanalysis
Sri Swami Sivananda

LIFE: A FUNDAMETAL NEUROSIS - LIBERATION OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS FROM THE TRAMMELS
OF ALL LIMITATIONS
SELFLESS service is essential. One should take to it. Why? In order to exhaust the
potential sources of egoistic behaviour. According to the Bhagavad Gita, life is a
fundamental neurosis. It is born of a desire to appropriate to oneself all that one
can according to one's capacity or one's mental make-up. This appropriating
tendency is the basis of all instincts and propensities. By working selflessly the
push of life, lying potential, becomes exhausted, By renouncing fruit of action
done, the force of appropriating tendencies is exhausted. When the limit is
reached, even the will to live disappears. Interest in the objects of the senses
wanes away completely. Consciousness is freed from the trammels of cognition
affection and conation. Then it is that consciousness proves itself, and the
knowledge of the Self dawns.
BIRTH OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AN AID TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF SPIRITUAL TRUTHS
Until psychoanalysis was born, the thesis of the Gita could not rationally be
supported. For this Lord Krishna says, Karmanyevadhikaraste... and so on. Apart
from the regular philosophical meaning of this Sloka there is another
methodological meaning. It means you go on following the discipline or the method
of Karma Yoga and other things in the Gita without trying to co-relate method with
the fruits of Self-knowledge.
Do not put the question: How can knowledge of the "Thing-in-it Self" come, by doing
selfless service and mediation? The Lord says, 'You cannot know it at this stage.
Your Adhikara lies only in the performance of action.' You can now say that it is
on account of psychoanalytical reason that it so happens.
Now psychoanalysis is a subtle technical subject. It requires intellectual acumen,

academic training and laboratory experience In order to understand psychoanalytical
techniques and theories, Arjuna was not psychoanalyst. The battle was not the place
for elaborating the principles of psychoanalysis. Hence Lord Krishna in a masterly
way told Arjuna to act upon His words and not try to understand the why and how of
his method in abstraction of Karma. It is from this point of view that a Guru is
necessary And it is from this point of view too that you have to go to the Guru
with faith. If, however, you become unduly curious or inquisitive, you will have to
waste a lot of your precious time in the study of psychoanalysis. It is a subject
for the specialist. If you want realization you follow what Guru says. But if you
want to become a specialist of methodology. You do not trouble Brahma-Vidya Gurus.
You go to the psycho analysts.
PRONOUNCEMENTS OF INDIAN SAGES ON PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOALYSIS
So it is the glory of the Indian saints that they have gone beyond the mere
principles of psychoanalysis and established a perfect method for the realization
of the Self. The classical text-book is the Bhagavad Gita. It prescribes selfless
service to the extension to which you will have to go until the knowledge of the
self, becomes as clear to your inward and outward vision as it was to the ancient
and modem Indian sages, or as the light within the electric bulb is to you. The
Indian sages, had made final pronouncements upon psychoanalysis. Beneath names and
forms, you will see that light in perfect transparency. Then you must get up early
in the morning at 4 o'clock. The sages have found it to be the best time for
meditation. Meditation is the process whereby you can successfully free your
consciousness from the restricted movement within the limited sphere of cognition,
conation and affection. Once freed, it will range all over the plane of inner being
which is above, or behind, the conscious level.
This plane is all-pervasive and immanent. You will become one with the universe, a
Cosmic Individual. So let us lay the lessons of selfless service and meditation to
our hearts!

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Selfless Service and the Principles of Psychoanalysis

Sri Swami Sivananda

BIRTH OF PSYCHOANALYSIS AN AID TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF SPIRITUAL TRUTHS

Now psychoanalysis is a subtle technical subject. It requires intellectual acumen,

PRONOUNCEMENTS OF INDIAN SAGES ON PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOALYSIS

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