Communion Through Equanimity

What Gita teaches is anaashakti yoga [communion through equanimity], the yoga of disinterestedness or impersonal action, in which you remain totally indifferent to any personal interest in the work that you do and in the results that accrue from it. It means working with full concentration to the limits of your capacity for excellence, but orienting all your actions to the service of God and remaining established in God-consciousness.

When that sacred orientation becomes the basis of all your activities, then such karma [action] belongs to the yoga of anaashakti. That is the highest level of action and leads you straight on the path of your goal.

Anaashakti yoga is not easily accessible to ordinary people. But that does not mean that you should give up trying to attain it. With whole-hearted effort and God’s grace, seemingly impossible things can be achieved. If you persist in your efforts then, with practice you will be able to reach this high level of anaashakti yoga in your all activities.

Digest, p. 9

Yoga is defined by Patanjali as the nirodha, (control) of the vrittis, (agitations and anxieties) of the chitta, (inner consciousness). If the mind is stilled and free from waves produced by the wind of desire, then one becomes a yogi. The Lord is the highest yogi, for He is the ocean that is unaffected by the waves that agitate the surface. Yoga of this type is the best means of attaining the Yogishwara [Lord of the yogis]. Not breath control but sense control is the prescription.

Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 7, p. 36

Life is all the sweeter for the restrictions and limits. You will encounter many obstacles in life, but do not be disheartened by them. Pleasure and pain alternate in life; in fact, pleasure is but the interval between two pains. And that makes it welcome and worthwhile. Have the future always in view and put up with pain now, so that you can meet it boldly when it befalls you later in life. Tyaga (renunciation) is the real yoga; renounce and become a master of yourself. Indulgence is the cause of disease.

Digest, p. 339

There are some people who have only outward vision. There are others who have developed inward vision. Outward vision sees only the illusory world outside. The inward vision transforms the mind and fills the heart with sacred feelings. In order to gain the inner vision, this anaashakti [desirelessness] has to be developed.

Digest, p. 8