If one's body is ill from overexertion, it must rest; if one's mind is ill from nervousness, stimulation, or from excessive brain activity, it must rest; but if one's soul is ill, and this is the difference, nothing but activity will help it, and this activity can only be expressed through the body and mind. Surplus rest of body or mind is a process of over-feeding, which is a coarsening and thickening of tissue, which in its turn causes Inertia, and this word I continually capitalise, for it is the first devil of the soul.
Before every spiritual illumination, this Inertia, in a measure, must be overcome. If you could watch the secret life of the great workers of the world, especially those who have survived the sensuous periods of their lives, you would find them in an almost incessant activity; that their sleep is brief and light, though a pure relaxation; that they do not eat heartily more than once a day; that they reach at times _a great calm_, another dimension of calm entirely from that which has to do with animal peace and repletion. It is the peace of intensive production--and the spectacle of it is best seen when you lift the super from a hive of bees, the spirit of which animates every moving creature to one constructive end. That which emanates from this intensity of action is calm, is harmony, and harmony is rest. A man does not have to sink into a stupor in order to rest. The hours required for rest have more to do with the amount of food one takes, and the amount of tissue one tears down from bad habits, than from the amount of work done. Absolutely this is true if a man's work is his own peculiar task, for the work a man loves replenishes.
Desire tears down tissue. There is no pain more subtle and terrifying than to want something with fury. To the one who is caught in the rhythm of his task, who can lose himself in it, even the processes which so continually tear down the body are suspended. In fact, if we could hold this rhythm, we could not die.
This is what I would tell you: Rhythm of work is joy. This is the full exercise--soul and brain and body in one. Time does not enter; the self does not enter; all forces of beautifying play upon the life. There is a song from it--that some time all shall hear, the song that mystics have heard from the bees, and from open nature at sunrise, and from all selfless productivity.