From what you have heard earlier, you would have observed that Yoga practice is also a social welfare work at the same time. The predominant trait of the human being is to misunderstand everything. Anything that is said, one distorts and takes in the wrong direction. Again, and again, the old habit of "myself doing the Yoga practice" will persist, as if it has nothing to do with anybody else in the world. If you have properly gathered the harvest of the earlier discussions, you would have been able to give up this wrong notion that meditation is an individual affair. It is not only a cosmic affair, it is also a social affair.

In that sense, we may say that a Yogi is the greatest social welfare worker. Nobody can do so much good to the world as a Yogi engaged in meditation can do. You must know very well that the value of work depends upon what you think in your mind. There are millions of social welfare enterizedn in the world, many dedicated to society's welfare, but, actually, what they do with their hands and feet is not so important as what they are thinking in their minds at the time of their working.

What does a social welfare worker think in the mind? "Let me do good to people." And what kind of good are you going to do? You may give people clothing, food, water, arrange for electricity in their houses, also provide for medical attention; but why is a person so interested in doing this kind of social welfare work? There will be a very unintelligent answer in response to this question: "Just to serve. I like to serve and be of assistance to people - help to remove poverty, ignorance and disease. This is what I am intending to achieve."

Now, what do you get out of it, by your hard work in these social welfare circles? "I get satisfaction." What kind of satisfaction are you deriving? "I feel that I have done my duty. That is a great satisfaction to me." How long will you be able to provide the necessary means to a person? And, after all, what have you given to that person? Maybe you provide him with some academic education and the means of creature comforts of the body. Even after these attempts on your part, two consequences may follow. Due to your eagerness to work for the welfare of people, you may come in conflict with people - for some sentimental reason, society may not want you any more. To your own surprise, they can retaliate for your interference with a little sentiment of theirs, though you had a good intention of educating them, making them better human beings.

The great social welfare workers of the world were killed by the very people whom they served; they either shoot the man, or crucify him, or throw him out of their jurisdiction. Very few people go without this encounter with society. Reasons for this kind of unfortunate retaliation from people, against the very people who have done them good work, may also be of various types.

In the enthusiasm to do hard work for the welfare of people, you might not have properly understood their feelings, their needs, and their faiths, which may even be religious. Most of the religious people are fanatics. They will cling to some god, some temple, some fetish, some deity. If you interfere with these, all the good work that you have done to them will be null and void in one day. History is a record before you for your appreciation of this tremendously tragic consequence following from even well-intentioned good work done to people. You know world history and national history, and you might have read what happened to the great stalwarts of social welfare. So, the work that we do for the welfare of people in a purely secularistic manner of outlook will finally end in some despair to the people, as well as to your own self, who has been doing so much good work: "So much I have done. After all, people are ungrateful. I will go to ashrams and lead a retired life."

Politicians become social workers when they get fed up with political machinations: "They say politics is dirty. I will do good work to society." Social workers are again in a state of despair toward the end of their lives, and want to go to ashrams. The reason is that they have not approached the problem of life properly. The sentimental nationality-bound attitude is so limited that it cannot cater to the essential needs of the human being.

Every person has a soul. This aspect is totally neglected by social welfare workers. Nobody knows if there is a soul in a human being. Nobody asks, "How is your soul?" It looks like a ridiculous question to the common mind. But, as is your soul, so is your mind and body. So, without the education of the soul, the education of the mind and the body and social connection is not going to bring much benefit.

The Yoga student, the Yogi who practices meditation, understands society much better than politicians and social welfare workers. He knows the secret of human existence - not merely the operations of the mind and the bodily relations of people, but the Yogi, through his investigational capacity, knows what a human being really needs.

As we have observed earlier, a person needs everything and all things. If you give something, he will feel that something else has not been given to him. And what has not been given will cloud his satisfaction that something has been given to him. "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is often buried with their bones," said Shakespeare. Whatever good you have done for people will be buried with your bones, but the wrongs that you have done will be remembered for eternity. This is human nature! You might have done ninety percent good, but ten percent of something unpleasant. People will remember only the ten percent, and the ninety percent will go to the winds. You have to understand people thoroughly before you deal with them.

Only a Yogi can know the secret of human nature, in which the Yogi also is included. So, the moment the Yoga of meditation commences, a breeze of potential comprehensiveness blows from his heart and touches, through his deep feelings, the corners of the earth. It can satisfy even the gods in heaven.

Nobody has seen gods; we have seen only people and things. The meditational technique, being transcendental as well as personal and social, gets related to all things at the same time. Your meditations will stimulate the atmosphere and people around you, the world around you, and it will stimulate even the gods seated in their thrones.

In the earlier stages of this stimulating activity of the meditational process, there will be a surprised tumult both in earth and in heaven because you do not know what you are doing, and why you are doing it. Because the intention of your meditational technique is not known in the beginning, there is a disturbance created, as it is before we have a cool and balming rainfall. It is a tumultuous uproar in the skies; thunders and lightnings strike from all sides, disturbing us and the whole atmosphere, only to end in the great satisfaction of rainfall. In a similar manner, deep meditations (I am not talking of ordinary shallow contemplations) stimulate the vibrational contents of the entire atmosphere. Everything will sense what is happening.

In the earliest of stages, there will be a kind of oppositional atmosphere created around you. This is because the sense organs, which have been habituated to a particular way of operation, when they are made to retrace their steps to their source, will act in a manner like an ocean that is pushed back from the shores by a powerful wind. Huge waves will rise in the ocean, because of this gale striking the ocean-waves back towards its enter. There will be a catastrophic rising of water waves, which will dash with double force on the shore, deluging villages, uprooting trees, and inundating the entire area; but that is only in the initial stage. When the wind ceases, they retrace their steps and then the ocean maintains its original position.

You might have read in the Puranas and epics and the Yoga scriptures that gods themselves feel disturbed by your meditations. Though you may not expect to see gods directly in your meditations, their actions can be seen manifest in the behaviour of people in the world. The god is not an isolated far-off divinity, astral in nature. It is an operative force in an ethereal region which can descend into the lowest region of the earth, so that a person just before you, around you, can act towards you in the same manner as the gods in heaven disturbed by your meditation. They can tempt you. You may say, Gods have not come, but you must know that people have come. They are the grosser media employed by the higher powers to carry out their intentions.

Ugly things will look beautiful. Tasteless dishes will look extremely delicious. A little thing in front of you will attract your attention. You may like to possess even a pencil, though earlier you had renounced the whole world. A little petty object that will not draw the attention of an ordinary householder will draw the Yogi's attention because of the subtlety of the operation of the mind, and the subtle ways of the retaliation of the sense organs. Varieties of difficulties will arise.

These are not to be feared at all, if you are fully aware of the causes of these appearances. If you know what kind of illness you have, you will also be prepared to know all its manifestations through the body. Unprepared minds, suddenly exacting their will force, compelling the mind to meditate without proper understanding and discrimination preceding the act of meditation, will have to face problems. They can be thrown back to their original bound life in the world. But when you go deep into the structure of your meditational process, you will be touching your own heart.

Finally, it is the heart that meditates, not merely the mental conscious process. Where your heart is, there you also are; so, if the heart is elsewhere, the mental operations in the form of meditation will yield no benefit. If your heart rises to the surface of activity in the form of meditation, it will touch the souls of everybody else also, simultaneously. There will be a turning of the tables round, and all opposition will be pulled down, like the cessation of a tempestuous wind.

I mentioned to you about the amritamanthana process where the desired result, which was nectar, was not coming up. Deadly contradiction arises to cause you a sense of defeat, as if you have done something utterly wrong. After that, you will have a side-tracking process going on in your mind, which will direct you to pay excessive attention to things which look like achievements and attainments in Yoga. They are the jewels that rise from the ocean. Finally, you have the nectar.