Karma Yoga Bhakti Yoga

Author(s): Swami Vivekanand
Publisher: Ramkrishna Vivekananda Center of New York INC

Page 89

COMPLETE SELF-ABNEGATION
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injure themselves; and there is a third class, who, to do good to themselves, injure others. It is said by a Sanskrit poet that there is a fourth unnameable class of people who injure others merely for injury's sake. Just as there are at one pole of existence the highest good men, who do good for the sake of doing good, so, at the other pole, there are others who injure others just for the sake of the injury. They do not gain anything thereby, but it is their nature to do evil.
Here are two Sanskrit words. The one is “Pravritti," which means revolving towards, and the other is “Nivritti," which means revolving away. The "revolving towards” is what we call the world, the "I and mine;" it includes all those things which are always enriching that "me" by wealth and money and power, and name and fame, and which are of a grasping nature, always tending to accumulate everything in one centre, that centre being "myself." That is the "Pravritti," the natural tendency of every human being; taking everything from everywhere and heaping it around one centre, that centre being man's own sweet self. When this tendency begins to break, when it is “Nivritti” or “going away from," then begin morality and religion. Both “Pravritti” and “Nivritti” are of the nature of work : the former is evil work, and the latter is good work. This “Nivritti” is the fundamental basis of all morality and all religion, and the very perfection of it is entire self-abnegation, readiness to sacrifice