14 Oct 2013
[Shri Surya: A colleague in my office follows the principle “Work is Worship”. Could You please comment on this?]
Shri Swami: The meanings of the words work and worship differ from one context to the other. Some people follow work as worship and such people may belong to very low level or very high level. In very low level, people do not spend any time for the sake of God. Such people are always involved in the materialistic work and have no time even to think about God. But, this statement can be taken as the highest level in the context of a devotee like Hanuman. The work of Rama as the service to God is more important than the personal worship of Rama with flowers etc. If you do the work of God, God will be immensely pleased, who will not be pleased so much through personal worship. Thus, this statement applies to different contexts in different senses. The work in low level is referred as karma and the work in high level is referred as karma yoga.
The other statement is that worship is work. This also applies to different contexts in different senses. The low level application of this statement can be seen in the case of a priest, who always worships the statue representing God. Such worship is his work to earn the livelihood. This statement also has high level application as in the case of Prahlada. Prahlada, being a small boy, cannot do the service to God and is involved in praising the Lord always, which is personal worship. Therefore, in his case, the worship to God alone is the work.
If you take the work as materialistic work (karma), “work is worship” is low level. If you take the sense of work as divine service (karma yoga), the same statement becomes highest level. ‘Worship is the work’ is also highest level as in the case of Prahlada and the same statement is low level as in the case of priest. The middle level for an ordinary human being is worship and work, which means that one must worship God for sometime and work for earning the livelihood in the rest of the time.