‘Often we hear spiritualists declaring that, if they worked on the physical plane, they would lose their light! No, physical work is necessary; it must be there as the necessary prelude to heat, that is to say, to love. And when that love is sufficiently intense it produces light, that is to say, intelligence. Light is the result of movement and heat. If you believe that physical work robs you of your light, therefore, it is because it is not true light; it is sloth. There is nothing in initiatic science to indicate that work destroys light.

Different energies on the physical, astral and mental planes
The will, movement and activity correspond to the physical plane; feelings correspond to the astral plane, and thought to the mental plane. And whether you start from the top or the bottom, the energies produced by an activity on any one of these planes can be transformed into a different form of energy by moving onto the next plane.

In other words, you can move upwards from action to thought or downwards from thought to action. The process by which movement is transformed into heat and light (or light into heat and movement) are well known and frequently applied in physics.

Physical work is indispensable for spiritual evolution
Unfortunately the people who do not know or apply them are slothful spiritualists who are content to meditate, study, reflect and talk without ever transforming any of these activities into feelings or actions. But I have been given the task – and a thankless task it often is – of looking after you, and this obliges me to give you a proper understanding of these things so that you may be free and evolve more rapidly.

You have to understand, therefore, that physical work is indispensable to the evolution of every human being without exception. Even if no one else obliges you to work, you must oblige yourself. If you do not, your health, particularly your muscles and your circulation, will feel the ill-effects.

Even doing domestic chores can help one acquire more light
On the pretext that you feel perfectly well, you never exert yourself, but it is precisely this illusory well-being that misleads the whole of mankind. If you only realized how beneficial physical activity was for your health and even for a heightened consciousness, you would always make an effort, even when you are alone at home, to have some chores to do, something to clean or wash.

In fact, even I, who could so easily ask the brothers and sisters to do things for me, do as much of my own work as I can. Yes, because I know that it is not by getting other people to do one’s work that one acquires more light. Indeed, I often wonder what people understand by ‘light’. Few people really know much about what light is or how it is born.’

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

From a lecture given at The Bonfin, August 4, 1965

Complete Works Volume 18, Jnana Yoga Vol 2
Chapter 2, Spiritual Work