Spiritual Development Can Occur Regardless of One’s Activities in the World

From early childhood we are inculcated with the idea of achieving success, becoming foremost and occupying a position of power, prestige or wealth in the world. Parents drum this idea into the mind of their children that they need to study, attain degrees, choose suitable (lucrative) careers, and marry well to occupy their role in society. A hierarchy is established through this process that treats certain types of careers as prestigious and rewarding, and others as low, demeaning, degrading, or somehow of lesser value or importance.

Even when individuals take up the spiritual quest, they have these ‘habits’ still ingrained in their psyche and wind up, through the lens of mental judgment based on them, categorizing certain activities as better, bigger, more important as compared to others. This can take the form of a sattwik egoism, if it is based on an idea of mental or moral superiority, or a form of rajasic egoism, if it is based on a need to impose oneself upon others and assert power and control, or even a tamasic egoism, if it is simply allowing these past impressions to control them without any reflection or thought involved at all.

This crops up in the form of treating certain individuals who have been assigned jobs with certain types of public activity, or intellectual efforts, or management responsibility as more important and more spiritually advanced than those who are set to carry out assigned tasks or who do subordinate tasks for the person having the most visible role and responsibilty. Similarly, in many societies the role of women is treated as a lesser position or value than the activities of the men. In some cultures or religious backgrounds, this is extended to a judgment about the spiritual potential or attainments, and women are thereby excluded from leadership roles in those groups. Clearly, spiritual development is not tied to whether someone takes birth in a male or female body, or in any particular group, racial background or other purely exte
al features of their current birth.

It is good to reflect on things that illustrate that everything is based in oneness and the “big” jobs cannot succeed without the “small” jobs being done. An intellectual immersed in studies will not survive if there is not a farmer to grow the food, a carrier to move the food, a market to stock the food, and individuals to purchase and store and then prepare the food. All of those “smaller” jobs are essential to the success of the “bigger” job. Similarly, scientists tell us that if the ants or the bees were to be exterminated, our human life on this planet would not be tenable.

The outer work is not a reflection of the inner spiritual development or maturity. A person could be outwardly seen as important, a head of state or a CEO of a major corporation, and yet be quite immature spiritually; while someone sweeping the dust out of a house may in fact be a quite mature soul! The spiritual realisation can come through the path of knowledge, the path of power, the path of interchange, love and devotion and harmony, the path of service. Each of these elements is essential for the completeness of the creation, and over the course of many lifetimes, it is likely that a particular soul has occupied various positions in the exte
al ‘hierarchy’ while their soul gained the experience and maturity it sought from that particular life experience.

There are cases where individuals with extensive academic or intellectual attainments wind up taking on functions that build their ability to serve, to support, to protect, to assist others and this requires them to undertake roles that are different than their natural academic or intellectual pursuits. These new functions do not take away from the development they have in other fields, but actually may enrich their understanding and their powers of action in the world by adding entirely new areas of focus and capacity.

Sri Aurobindo observes: “Of course the idea of bigness and smallness is quite foreign to the spiritual truth…. Spiritually tehre is nothing big or small. Such ideas are like those of the literary people who think writing a poem is a high work and making shoes or cooking the dinner is a small and low one. But all is equal in the eyes of the Spirit — and it is only the spirit within which it is done that matters. It is the same with a particular kind of work, there is nothing big or small.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 3, Action and Work, pg. 63