19 February 2015 - QA 6

Yoga Vasishtha emphasizes that personal effort is everything and Ishavasya Upanishad says, everything you get by personal effort is smaller than you. Can you please clarify.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar:

Truth is multi-dimensional and that is why you find it to be completely opposite. This is the beauty of the ancient wisdom; it accommodates completely opposite point of views, and both are true.
It’s true that it is your effort at one level, and it’s true that whatever you achieve with your effort, is much smaller than you.
It can be very confusing, right? This is because our mind is trained to think linear. We don’t think spherically. This is for you to change your way of thinking and understanding from being linear and moving on to something wholistic and much more spherical in nature.