(Photo by Thirdman, courtesy of Pexels)
There is an image of spiritual realization that can exert a powerful attraction: one rises beyond the noise and demands of ordinary life into a peace so complete that the world, with all its complications, seems finally left behind.
The great Yoga and Vedanta traditions certainly know profound states of absorption in which ordinary mental activity falls away. They also recognize the value of periods of withdrawal, silence, retreat, and concentrated spiritual practice. Swami Satchidananda sometimes compared the beginning stages of spiritual life to a young plant.
While it is tender, a fence may be necessary to protect it from animals that could trample it. But when the plant has matured into a strong tree, the fence is no longer needed. The very animals that once threatened it can rest peacefully in its shade. The protected environment has done its work.
The ultimate goal, then, is not to remain forever protected from the world. It is to become established enough in our true nature that we can live in the midst of the world without losing ourselves in it. The Bhagavad Gita gives us one of the clearest portraits of such a person.
How Does a Realized Person Live?
Toward the end of the second chapter of the Gita, Arjuna asks Sri Krishna an extraordinarily practical question. What does a person of steady wisdom—a sthitaprajna—actually look like? How does such a person speak? How does such a person sit and move through the world? The question is significant. Arjuna does not merely ask what realization feels like in meditation. He asks how realization appears in a human life.
Sri Krishna’s answer unfolds over many verses. The person of steady wisdom is content in the Self, is not overwhelmed by sorrow, does not cling to pleasure, and is free from the compulsive movements of attachment, fear, and anger. The senses continue to function. Experiences continue to arise. The world has not disappeared. What has changed is the person’s relationship to it. Sri Krishna eventually gives a beautiful image: just as rivers flow continually into the ocean without disturbing its fullness or stability, the movements and experiences of life may come to the sage without disturbing the inner steadiness of one who is established in the Self.
The senses continue to encounter their objects. Thoughts and impulses may arise in the mind. But they no longer generate the same movement of grasping—“I want this; I need this; this will complete me.” The sage remains full, like the ocean, because that fullness is no longer sought through what comes and goes. This is not indifference to life. It is freedom in the midst of life.
The Jivanmukta: Free While Living
Swami Satchidananda often spoke of this ideal through the traditional Vedantic term jivanmukta: one who is liberated while still living in a body. The body continues to function. The mind continues to perform its necessary work. A liberated person may teach, travel, cook, make decisions, answer letters, care for others—or do the laundry. Liberation does not require the disappearance of activity. What disappears is the false identification that says: “This body and mind are what I am. I am the separate doer of all these actions. Their results determine who I am.”
The jivanmukta knows the Self as their true identity, rather than identifying with the changing body, mind, role, or circumstance. Life continues on the relative plane, but it is no longer mistaken for the whole of Reality. This is one reason Swami Satchidananda placed so much emphasis on what might be called dual vision.
Living on Two Levels Without Dividing Reality
Vedanta speaks of different levels from which reality may be understood. On the vyavaharika level—the relative or transactional level—we live in a world of persons, responsibilities, choices, relationships, consequences, pleasure, pain, work, and service. We must respond intelligently and appropriately to that world. On the paramarthika level—the ultimate level—there is only the one indivisible Reality. The Self is never actually diminished, injured, enlarged, or changed by the movements occurring within the relative world.
Spiritual maturity does not require choosing one level and denying the other. Swami Satchidananda often emphasized learning to live with both in view. He sometimes compared life to acting in a drama. An actor must play the role wholeheartedly. If the script calls for sorrow, joy, courage, or struggle, the actor does not stand on the stage saying, “None of this is real, so I refuse to participate.” The role must be played. At the same time, somewhere within, the actor remembers: “I am not actually this character.” That remembrance creates freedom.
Swami Satchidananda sometimes expressed the same teaching through his characteristically practical phrase, “When in Rome, behave like Romans.” The point was not conformity for its own sake. It was that realization does not make us incapable of functioning naturally within the circumstances of life. We participate fully without becoming inwardly imprisoned by the role we are playing.
Action and Inaction
This helps illuminate one of the Bhagavad Gita’s most famous paradoxes. Sri Krishna says that the wise person sees inaction in action and action in inaction. It can be tempting to interpret this simply as outward activity combined with inward stillness: the hands are busy, but some quiet witnessing part remains untouched. There is truth in that experience, but the Gita is pointing still deeper. Its teaching concerns the mystery of action itself: What is truly acting? What makes action binding? What does it mean to say, “I am the doer”?
Elsewhere Sri Krishna explains that the activities of nature are carried out through the gunas of prakriti, while the ego, confused by identification, thinks, “I am the doer.” The liberated person does not therefore become physically inactive. Action may continue vigorously. What has fallen away is the egoic claim upon the action. This is the deeper sense in which inaction can be seen in action. The body acts. The mind thinks. Words are spoken. Work is accomplished. Yet the Self remains what it has always been—unchanging, whole, untouched by action.
And “action in inaction” warns us against imagining that simply withdrawing physically from activity constitutes spiritual non-action. One may sit perfectly still while the mind races with desire, fantasy, fear, judgment, and self-concern. Outer inactivity is not necessarily inner freedom. The Gita’s teaching therefore cannot be reduced to doing less. The real question is whether action proceeds through attachment and identification or through freedom.
(Photo courtesy of Pexels.)
From Protected Practice to Freedom in the World
This also helps us understand the place of ashrams, retreats, monasteries, and periods of concentrated practice. There can be enormous value in creating conditions that protect and nourish spiritual growth. A young plant may genuinely need its fence. For some people, especially in the beginning, a life filled with constant stimulation, conflicting demands, and unsupportive influences makes it difficult to establish a steady spiritual practice. Sangha, discipline, silence, meditation, and an environment oriented toward spiritual life can strengthen what is still fragile.
But the fence is not the tree. The purpose of the protected environment is not to make us permanently dependent upon protection. It is to help something grow strong enough that eventually it can remain rooted under changing conditions.
The mature spiritual life asks: Can the peace discovered in meditation remain recognizable when meditation ends? Can the Self be remembered while answering the telephone, navigating conflict, caring for another person, managing money, cleaning the kitchen, or making a difficult decision? Can we remain inwardly free while outwardly fulfilling the responsibilities that life places before us? That is where spiritual realization enters the laundry room.
Sahaja: The Natural State
Some Advaita traditions use the term sahaja samadhi for the natural, stabilized condition in which realization is no longer confined to a particular meditative absorption. Sri Ramana Maharshi, for example, used sahaja to distinguish the natural abiding of realization from temporary states in which the mind becomes absorbed and later returns to ordinary functioning.
That language can be helpful. Swami Satchidananda, however, more often spoke in the language of the jivanmukta: the person who has realized the Self and yet continues to live and function in the world. The two point toward an important shared truth. Realization is not complete merely because we can touch profound stillness under ideal conditions. Spiritual freedom becomes natural when it is no longer dependent upon the absence of activity.
The test is not whether the waves disappear. The test is whether we know the depth that is never reduced to the waves.
Freedom Becomes Service
And once action is no longer centered so completely around the separate ego, something else becomes possible: Service. The person who does not need every action to reinforce a personal identity can become increasingly available to the needs of others. Karma Yoga ceases to be merely a preliminary discipline and begins to reveal something of its deepest meaning: action can flow without constant calculation about what “I” will gain from it.
Spirituality is not confined to meditation halls or philosophical discussion. It appears in how carefully a task was done, how another person is treated, how a community is served, how a room is cleaned, how food is prepared, and how responsibly one participates in the world. The highest realization and the simplest act need not belong to different realms of life. That may be one of the most important meanings of liberation while living. The jivanmukta has not escaped the world. The world is simply no longer mistaken for the Self. The role continues, but the actor is known. Action continues, but the claim “I am the doer” has loosened its hold. The relative world continues with all its complexity, while the ultimate Reality remains what it has always been.
And so, yes, the laundry still gets done. But perhaps freedom was never about getting away from the laundry. It was about discovering who we are while doing it.
(Author’s note: With gratitude to Swami Karunananda, who brought to my attention a teaching of Swami Satchidananda that helped inspire this reflection.)
About the Author:
(Erik Phillips-Nania)
Erik Phillips-Nania is a Yoga teacher, writer, former attorney, and author of Climate Change Yoga (2015, rev. 2021), which develops an eco-yoga framework for the healing and revitalization of the Earth. He holds a JD and a Master of Environmental Law and Policy from Vermont Law School, and a 500-hour RYT teaching certification in the Himalayan Kundalini lineage from World Peace Yoga School in Rishikesh. He is founding editor of the Journal of Contemplative Neuroscience & Yogic Studies, and his writing explores dharma, moksha, Ayurveda, pranayama, sacred ecology, and the yogic perspective on contemporary civilization. Erik lives and serves at Satchidananda Ashram–Yogaville as Programs Coordinator. He writes at https://epn108.substack.com/.
