Service Of Man As God–Its Relevance

1. There is no difference between the service of man and the worship of God, between manliness and faith, between true righteousness and spirituality.

2. Doing good to his fellow-beings is the only universal and practical religion for every human being.

3. Whereas other hard yogas and austerities were practiced in other eras, in this kaliyuga helping others is the only act of goodness.

4. Although a man has not studied a single system of philosophy, although he does not believe in any God, and never has believed, although he has not prayed once in his whole life, but if the simple power of good actions has brought him to that state where he is ready to give up his life and all else for others, he has arrived at the same point to which the religious man will come through his prayers and the philosopher through his knowledge. All mankind will stand in reverence and awe before the man who is ready to sacrifice himself for others. This makes him the quintessential Karma-yogi.

5. You may talk about thousands of theories, make millions of sects but till you have a heart to feel, till you are restless for the well-being of the poor, downtrodden and ignorant, and make them a part of your being, till you feel that you and those poor and rich, saint and sinner are the part of the same infinite Self, whom you call God, all your talks of religion are vain.

6. The gist of all religions is to be pure and to do good to others. He who sees God in the poor, in the weak and in the diseased, really worships God. He who has served and helped one poor man, seeing God in him, without thinking of his caste or creed or race or anything, with him God is more pleased than the man who sees him only in the temple. So let the poor, the illiterate, the ignorant, the afflicted be your God. Service of these alone is the highest religion.

7. As calamities and distress make no distinction between man and man but afflict all alike, so also while serving, we should not make any distinction; service should not be rendered in a spirit of condescending or compassion but as devoted worship of the Lord abiding in the hearts of all beings.

8. It is verily God who has taken those forms of the poor, the destitute and the suffering to give us an opportunity to serve Him. That’s why He is also known as ‘Daridra Narayana’.

9. All individuals being the same unity, are equally sacred and worthy of service. Any discrimination amongst them is reprehensible. Service to man is service to God.

10. Who loves all beings without distinction, he indeed is worshipping best his God.

11. Where shall we go to find God if we cannot see him in every living being. Are not all the poor, the miserable, the weak, Gods? Why not to worship them first?

12. Real religion is the service of man outwardly and meditation inwardly. The realization of the Divine-self can be very much attained by devoted and selfless service of others.

13. Doing good to others is virtue; injuring others is sin. Loving others is virtue; hating others is sin. Knowledge of oneness is virtue; seeing diversity is sin.

14. Man is the highest being that exists and this is the greatest world. We can have no conception of God higher than man, so our God is man and man is God.

15. One may invent an image through which he may worship God but a better image already exists; the living men. That is the natural way to see God; seeing God in men. These are more worthy for worship than any imaginary God.

16. Think of the joy of loving man as God. It will engross us in activity and invoke all our inherent powers.

17. The man has been worshipping God through men all the time and must do so as long as he is a man. We may decry or struggle against it but as soon as we attempt to realize God, we will find the constitutional necessity of thinking of Him as a man.

18. You have to worship Him as man because there is no other way out of it. Two classes of men do not worship God as man – the human brutes who have no religion and the Paramhansas (highest yogis) who have gone beyond humanity.

19. The first gods, we have to worship, are our own countrymen, for service of men should begin with the people around you. We should worship them instead of being jealous of each other and fighting amongst ourselves.

20. A man is great among his fellow-beings in proportion to his capacity to sacrifice for the sake of others, whereas in animal kingdom, that animal is strongest which can kill the greatest number of animals. Do you love your fellow men? Then why not to worship them first?

21. If you cannot love your brother whom you see, how can you love God whom you do not see? If you cannot see God in the human face, how can you see him in the clouds or in images made of dull, dead matter?

22. “Ay fools! neglecting the living gods and His infinite reflections with which the world is full, you are running after imaginary shadows! Him worship, the only visible and break all other idols. Those who are men and yet have no feeling in the hearts for others, are they to be counted as men at all?”

23. The living God is within you and yet you are building churches and temples believing in all sorts of imaginary nonsense. The only God to worship is the human soul in the human body.

24. God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of the churches or temples.

25. If you want any good to come, just throw your ceremonials overboard and worship the Living God, the Man-God, every being that wears a human form. God cannot be worshipped; He is the immanent Being of the universe. It is only to his manifestation as man that we can pray.

26. In truth, altruistic service is the only religion, the rest – ceremonial observances etc. are all madness, even it is wrong to hanker after one’s own salvation. Liberation is only for him who gives up everything for others.

27. “Great men are those who build highways for others with their heart’s blood. This has been taking place through eternity, that one builds a bridge by laying down his own body and thousands of others cross the river with its help. Be it so! Be it so!”

28. “Let the Vedas, the Koran, the Puranas and all other scriptural lumber rest now for some time, let there be worship of the visible God. Rejecting His manifold forms before you, where are you seeking for God? One should realize that the people around him are also the manifestation of the same Spirit and that the enjoyment of the fruits of his labour by them is equivalent to his own enjoyment.”

29. “Fools, not knowing that I, the omnipotent and omnipresent God of the universe, has taken this human form, deride Me and think that it can not be”.

30. First of all, we have to bear in mind that we are all debtors to the world and the world does not owe us anything. In helping the world we really help ourselves. There is a God in the universe and this universe is not drifting or stands in need of help from you and me. God is ever present therein. He is undying, eternally active and infinitely watchful. When the whole world sleeps, He sleeps not; He is working incessantly.

31. Look upon every man and woman as God. You cannot help anyone, you can only serve; serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord himself, if you have the privilege. If the Lord grants that you can help anyone of his children, blessed you are; do not think too much of yourselves. Blessed you are that the privilege is given to you when others have it not.

32. Drive out of your mind the idea that you have to do something for the world; the world does not require any help from you. Do not have any illusion in helping anyone. Not an ant will die for want of your help. If you are a dualist, you are a fool to try to help God. If you are a monist, you know that you are God already. It is sheer nonsense on the part of any man to think that he is born to help the world; it is merely pride; it is selfishness insinuating itself as virtue.

33. It is blasphemy to think that you can help anyone. First root out this idea of helping and then go to worship. God’s children are your master’s children, are but different forms of the father. You are all his servants. Serve the living God! God comes to you in the form of the disabled, the poor, the weak and the diabolical. What a glorious chance for you to worship!

34. Vow, then to devote your whole life for the cause of redemption of those, the poor, the lowly, the oppressed, who are going down and down everyday for whom He comes from time to time.

35. It should be our resolve that we may be born again and again, and suffer thousands of miseries so that we may worship the only God that exists, the only God that we believe in, the sum total of all souls and above all our gods, the wicked, the miserable, the poor, who are the special objects of our worship.

36. Do not serve any living being out of compassion but serve out of love. For us it should not be service with pity but with love.

37. He who wants to serve the father (God) must serve his children first. He who pours water at the root, does he not water the whole tree?

38. If, even we shrink from working for the salvation of the sinful, the humiliated, and the afflicted, who else will take care of them in this world?

39. Our bodies have to go; there is no permanence about them. Wealth, fame, enjoyments are only for a few days. It is better to die working for others than to die like a worldly worm. Blessed are they whose bodies get destroyed in the service of others. Off at once to lay down your life for the good of others. What good it is in carrying a load of bones and flesh! Go, lay down this body of flesh and bones like sage Dadhichi for others!

40. No great work can be done without sacrifice. Lay down your comforts, pleasures, name, fame or position, nay, even your lives and make a bridge of human chains over which millions will cross the ocean of their lives.

41. Renunciation is the preceding value, service is the succeeding value. You can not serve without some form of renunciation. If you want to help somebody, to that extent you must give up your own self-interest.

42. Renunciation is a state of mind, it has nothing to do with your dress. If necessary, it is good to cast off saffron clothes and serve the people, otherwise it may be that seeing your dress, people will start serving you instead of your serving them.

43. Renunciation means renunciation of the little “I” and manifestation of the larger “I”, and not, as we understood it till now, renunciation of eating certain foods or wife and children.

44. Even if a thousand births have to be taken in order to relieve the sorrows of the world, surely we will take them. If by our doing so, even a single soul may have a little bit of his grief relieved, we will do it. Well, what avails it all to have only one’s own salvation? Every one should be taken along with oneself on that way.

45. Even if we perish while serving and nursing others, we should consider ourselves fortunate because they all are the embodiments of God. He, who thinks otherwise – out of vanity, superstition or ignorance, offends God and incurs a great sin.

46. We should be prepared to commit a crime and go to hell forever if that could really help a human being.

47. Go to hell yourself to buy salvation for others.

48. Let us go to hell with the sins of the whole world, but let the world be saved.

49. Who cares whether there is a heaven or hell, if there is a soul or not, if there is God or not? Here is the world and it is full of misery. Go out into it as Buddha did and struggle to lessen its miseries or die in the attempt.

50. Let miseries of the world come to us; we shall endure them all; let others go free.

51. ‘Even the least work done for others awakens the power within; even thinking of the least good of others gradually instills into the heart the strength of a lion. I love you all very much but I wish you all to die working for others, I would be rather glad to see you do that! Do as much as lies in your power’.

52. Most people think that when all their personal problems will be over, they will start thinking for other things of life, but problems are an integral part of life and will never end. One problem will go, another will come. Hence we should not let personal problems interfere in the process of our all round growth. It is life to do good, it is death not to do good to others.

53. My friend, this life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, so they alone live who live for others, the rest are more deed than alive.

54. This is a layman’s excuse that ‘I don’t have time’ as the adage says that, ‘The busiest man has the greatest leisure’. In truth it is not the question of time but of interest, as in the meantime we do a lot of other works. If there is no time how do we do them? It means that if even the busiest man wants to do something, he can do it by proper scheduling of his work; only thing needed is the inclination to do a thing. If you don’t have interest or desire then even if you are free, you will not be able to do the work. Hence for helping someone and specially for a noble cause we should not give the excuse of time. We all have a plenty of time if we really wish to do something.

55. In this evanescent world where everything is falling to pieces, we have to make the best use of what time we have and the highest use of life is to hold it at the service of all beings.

56. If you do not commit any sin, tell any lie, do not drink, gamble or steal, it is good, as it is reasonably expected from you; you cannot be applauded for it. Some service to others is also to be done. As you do good to yourself, you must do good to others also; only refraining from evils is not enough, performance of some noble deeds is also necessary.

57. You nourish your body by eating or mind by reading books, what good is there in doing that if you do not hold it as a sacrifice for the well-being of others? The whole world is one and therefore, it is right for you that you should serve millions of your brothers rather than aggrandize your little self.

58. Never a worker of good comes to grief.

59. Doing good to others is necessary for one’s own good. When you serve anyone, you serve yourself, for you and your brother are one. He is indeed a Yogi who sees himself in the whole universe and the whole universe in himself. We cannot leave any of our fellow-beings without helping him, because in his good lies our good.

60. Man’s concern for God and man, for God in man is the central theme of our philosophy of Vedanta. The real Vedantist alone will give up his life for his fellow-men without any compunction, because he knows he will never die. As long as there is one insect left in the world, he is living; as long as one mouth eats, he eats. So he goes on doing good to others; and is never hindered by the modern idea of caring for the body.