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FAITH AND PROGRESS When one makes an effort, makes a little progress, one gets satisfied and is proud of it. That spoils everything. How to get rid of this fault ? It is because one looks at oneself while doing a thing. It is the habit of constantly observing oneself as one works or lives. Certainly you must observe yourself; but more than that you must be sincere and spontaneous —spontaneous in what you do and not turning towards yourself all the while, judging, criticising, sometimes even severely. That is often as bad as patting oneself with satisfaction. You must be sincere in your aspiration, you need not even know that you are aspiring: you should become the aspiration. When you can do that, you feel an extraordinary strength. One minute of such an experience prepares you for years of progress. When you are no longer a person, an ego that is always looking at itself, when you are the very action you do—especially in the act of aspiration—well, I say nothing can be better than that. When it is not a person that aspires, when the aspiration shoots up in a concentrated momentum, one can go very far. Otherwise there is a mixture of vanity, self-sufficiency, even self-pity, all kinds of petty movements which spoil the affair. Page-103 What are the conditions for a descent of faith ? The most important condition is trust, a childlike trust, the candid feeling that knows that needed things will come, that there is no question about it. When the child has need of anything, he is certain that it is coming. This kind of simple trust or reliance is the most important condition. One must aspire, it is indispensable; but there are people who aspire yet with so much conflict within them, between faith and want of faith, trust and distrust, between optimism that is sure of victory and pessimism that is just waiting for the catastrophe to come etc., etc. If such is the state of your being, you may aspire but nothing will come out of it. You say, "I aspire and I get nothing"; that is because you are demolishing your aspiration all the while by your want of trust. But if truly you have the trust, things would be different. Children, for example, when they are left to themselves, when they have not been deformed by elderly people, have a great confidence that everything will be all right. When they have an accident, they never think that it will be anything serious. They have the spontaneous conviction that it will be set right soon and that helps things to get right soon. When you aspire for the Force, ask for the Divine's help, if you do it with an unshakable certitude that the thing will come, in that case, it is impossible for it not to come. In fact, as I say, such a conviction is in itself an inner opening. There are people Page-104 who are naturally and automatically in this condition. Whenever or wherever there occurs an opportunity to receive something from above they are there present. And there are others who always fail to be on the spot when there is an occasion for the descent: they close themselves at the right moment. But they who have the childlike reliance, they never miss an opportunity. It is a very curious phenomenon. Apparently there may not be much difference between the two types. Both may have the same goodwill, the same aspiration, the same desire to do one's best, but he who has a happy confidence in him, who does not question, who does not ask if he will have the thing or not, whether the Divine will answer or not—for, to him that is not the question, it is understood and taken for granted: "The thing I need I shall be given", he says, "if I pray my prayer will be granted, if I am in difficulty and I ask for help, the help will come, it will not only come but settle everything"—I say, the person who has such a spontaneous, candid, unquestioning reliance gets the best conditions under which an effective descent can occur; its action then is marvellous. It is with your mental contradictions and doubts that you spoil everything, with this kind of ideas that enter into you when you are in difficulty: "It is impossible, I shall never come to the end of it, suppose the situation gets worse, suppose I am to roll down etc., etc...." In this way you build up a wall between you and the Force that you want to receive. Page-105 The psychic being has this trust, has it in a wonderful manner, without a shadow, without a question, without contradictions and when it is there, there is no prayer that remains unanswered, no aspiration unfulfilled. Page-106 |