How karma does and does not work, what money is, and what helping others really means.
There is an opinion that if you help a beggar (and since karma means "as you sow, so shall you reap"), then you yourself will have to become a beggar in order to receive the same kind of help.
This approach is irrational and very harmful, because it leads us off the right path. The law of karma does not work like that. The return for our actions does not depend on external factors. What matters are the feelings you experience.
Suppose, for example, you robbed someone whose last ten thousand rubles were everything to them; their whole world was in that money. That person will go through severe pain and deep stress. To atone for this action you would have to lose all your millions, if you are a millionaire, so as to feel pain equivalent to what that person went through.
And conversely, when you help someone who no longer knows where help could come from, who is literally perishing, and you reach out a hand to them at the right moment, you save them. That is, to receive the return, you must first experience an equivalent grace. It is an inner feeling. The law of karma is not some soulless machine that records all your actions so that later they can be applied to you exactly.
Reactions to actions can appear in different ways. A certain amount of the pain or pleasure you originally sent out into the world must come back to you. This is an important criterion for understanding what to do and what not to do in this world.
Everyone needs help in one way or another. The kind of service can differ. Someone needs comforting; someone needs financial help; someone needs a scolding; someone needs intellectual help, that is, they need to be taught. Perfect, fully developed beings who have reached the highest point of evolution do not need help. But they themselves will serve the universe and all the beings of this world, and they will certainly call on you to do the same. Service is an inseparable part of spiritual development.
Spiritual practice: the daily effort, above all meditation, to move the mind toward the Infinite. and service are like two wings. Experience shows that when you help no one, progress in meditation is very slow. In other words, service supports good meditation. You can do sádhaná for hours, but the result will be weak. On the other hand, sádhaná helps service a great deal, because an intuitive understanding of "what is right" comes. You gain subtlety of thought and wisdom. As a result you stop harming people and society through your actions.
In every situation where you need to give some kind of help, you have to understand which service is fitting and useful at that moment, and which is out of place and harmful.
Each of us has an innate tendency toward a certain kind of activity. For example, some are drawn to physical work, some to leadership and military service, some to education and intellectual service, and some to the world of finance. In Sanskrit, people with these tendencies are called shudras, kshatriyas, vipras and vaeshyas. These are the four kinds of mentality. It is important to make it your goal to develop all four tendencies.
It is held that the best kind of service, the one that gives the most lasting result, is intellectual service. "Give a man a fish and he will be fed today. Teach a man to fish and he will be fed for life." That is why the fruits of intellectual service are the most rewarding. But such service is not always appropriate. Say there is a person at your door who is dying of hunger, and you begin to teach or lecture them. Do they need that right now? In this situation it is not needed and is even harmful. Simply feed this person, and only then think about how to help them more effectively.
We need to develop empathy, understanding and wisdom in ourselves. And to be aware of our true feelings: on the one hand, "what do I want?" and on the other, "what do I need?" And also to understand the difference between what a person wants and what they really need. If you give a person what they need, it may push them to grow and lift them up, even a little.
Money is bottled and extremely concentrated energy. It can be used for harm or for good. Financial help must be given very carefully. If a person has developed self-discipline, you can easily help them financially. They will decide for themselves and understand how to act most rightly and wisely. But if a person lacks these qualities and you suspect they will misuse the help, then you should not help with money.
You can help materially, but according to the needs of that person. If they need food, help with food. If they need clothing, help with clothing. If they need transport, help with transport. But not with money, because if the person misuses it and in the end the world receives suffering, you will have to atone for that karma through suffering.
When we solve other people's problems for them, we often clip their wings. In the end these people, unprepared for life, suffer themselves and make others suffer. And this is no longer service but a "bear's favor," help that does harm. So we need to help wisely. Still, it is better to act and make a mistake, then realize it and learn from it, than to do nothing. When a child is learning to walk, the parents simply watch until the last moment, and only when the child begins to fall do they catch them.
The philosophy of yoga says that the Supreme Consciousness pervades everything. And when you help someone, you are helping the supreme Consciousness in the form of this person who is facing difficulties today.
In this way you build a relationship with the supreme Consciousness. And the more often you do this, the deeper your feeling will be that everything is pervaded by one supreme Entity. We are all one. When you help, feel grateful, because you are being given a wonderful chance to show your best human qualities. By doing service you evolve spiritually.
