Disciple: “Have any realized God through mere work?”
Saradananda: “Through selfless work the mind gets purified. And when the mind becomes pure, knowledge and devotion arise in it. Knowledge is the very nature of the Self, but being covered with ignorance, it is not manifest. The object of selfless work is to remove this covering. As a matter of fact, knowledge dawns as soon as the mind becomes pure. In the Mahabharata you have the story of the chaste woman who attained knowledge by serving her husband and by performing her other household duties. In the Gita also you find, ‘By work alone King Janaka and others attained perfection’ (3.20). Not one but many attained perfection through work, for the text adds ‘and others.’”