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The
Divine Grace (1) WHEN you are in a certain set of circumstances and when certain things happen, these things often go against your desire or against what appears to you best. And you regret and say: "Oh! How much better it would have been had it been otherwise!" It does not matter whether the thing concerned is small or big. The years pass, events roll on. You progress, become more conscious, understand better. And when you look back, you discover, at first with surprise, later on with a smile, that the special circumstances which once appeared to you disastrous or unfavourable were just the very best thing that could have happened for your needed progress. And if you were a little wiser you would say, "Truly, the Divine Grace is infinite!" And when this happens to you a good number of times, you begin to understand that in spite of man's blindness and wrong appearances, the Grace is at work everywhere and because of the Grace it is the best possible that happens in the state where the world is at a given moment. It is because our vision is limited or because we are blinded by our preferences that we are unable to discover why things are as they are. But when one begins to see one enters into that state of wonder which nothing can describe. Behind the appearances one finds this infinite, marvellous, all-powerful Grace that knows everything, organises everything, arranges everything, and leads us, whether we want it or not, whether we know it or not, towards the supreme goal, the union with the Divine, the awareness of the Divine Consciousness and becoming one with it. Thus living in the action and the
presence of the Grace one
Page – 124 lives a life full of delight and wonder, the sense of a marvellous power and at the same time, full of a quiet and complete trust which nothing can shake.
Whatever may be the faith and the trust you have in the Divine Grace, whatever your capacity of seeing it at work in all circumstances, at every moment and at all points of life, you can never fully understand the marvellous immensity of its action and the precision and the exactitude with which it works. Never shall one grasp in what degree the Grace does everything, is behind everything, organises everything in order that the advance towards the divine realisation may be as swift, as complete, as total as it can be under the given circumstances of the world. As soon as you come in contact with it, you find
that there is not a second in time, not a point in space which does not show in
a signal manner this ceaseless work of the Grace, its constant intervention.
And once you have seen that, you feel you are never up to the mark. For you
must never forget that you must not have fear or anguish or regret or recoil or
even suffering. If you were in union with this Grace, if you saw it
everywhere, you would begin to live a life of exultation, all power and
infinite happiness. And that would be the best possible collaboration in the
Divine Work. (2) THERE is a time when one becomes conscious enough to see that things in themselves are neither good nor bad. What they are and what their effects are upon us depends entirely upon the attitude that we have towards them. The same thing, the same circumstance, identically the same, if taken as a gift from God, as a Divine Grace, as the effect of a total harmony, helps us to become more conscious, more strong and more true. On the other hand, taken as a blow given by Fate, as a bad force that seeks to hurt us it will serve only to diminish us, make us dull and heavy; it will take away our consciousness, our force and the harmony. I wish you all to have this experience. For when
you have it, you become master of yourself, not only master of yourself, but
Page – 125 master of the circumstances of your life, at least so far as they concern you personally. And that depends exclusively on the attitude that you take. It is not an experience that passes through your head (it may begin there); it is an experience that may happen even in your body. Its completion however needs much labour for concentration, self-mastery, for driving the consciousness into Matter. The result of a shock received by the body from outside will vary according to the manner in which the body receives it. And the body can be so perfected in this line that you become master of accidents. This power some have, fully developed and realised in the mind, the power, namely, to act upon the outer circumstances so that they are altogether changed when they act upon you. This power can come down into matter, into the physical substance itself, in the cells of the body and give to the body the same control over surrounding things. That is sure to come. This opens before you fresh horizons; it is one step on the way towards transformation.
If you are truly in a state of intense aspiration there is no circumstance that will not serve to help you in the realisation of your aspiration. All will come to help you, as if it were the perfect and absolute Consciousness that organised all things around you. And you in your external ignorance may not recognise it, may at first protest against the circumstances as they come to you, may grumble and try even to change them. But after a time you will have become wiser, with a little distance put in between the event and yourself, you will find out that that was just the thing necessary for you to make the required progress. It is a Will, a supreme Good Will that arranges everything around you.
If you say to the Divine with conviction, "I
want you alone", the Divine will arrange all circumstances in such a way
as to oblige you to be sincere. Something in you says, "I want nothing but
you", and then all the while you want a hundred different things. Usually
it is one thing particularly that comes
Page – 126 and troubles you and prevents you from realising your aspiration. Well, the Divine will come without showing himself, without even your suspecting it and He will arrange circumstances in such a way that whatever prevents you from being solely given to the Divine, will be inevitably removed from your path. And then when all such things are removed you begin to complain and shout. But subsequently, if you are sincere, you remember that you said to the Divine that you belonged to Him alone. And then He will remain with you, all the rest will pass. That is the greater Grace. Only you must say it with conviction – I do not mean that it has to be immediately integral, for if it is integral, the work is already done but that the central will of the being must say with conviction, "I want nothing but you." Even once would be sufficient. That may take time more or less, sometimes it may extend to years, but you reach your goal. You are certain to reach.
If you want a precise thing, if you have a special reason for invoking the Grace, you must formulate your prayer exactly and clearly. Naturally, if you are in a state of complete surrender, if you are giving yourself, offering yourself wholly, simply to the Grace and you let it work as it wants, there is nothing to say, it is all right. But after a time you must not begin to question about what it has done, you must not say, "I did that with the idea of getting this". Indeed if you have in you the idea of getting something then it is better to formulate the thing sincerely and simply, just as you see it. Thereafter it is for the Grace to choose, whether it will do or not do as you want. In any case, you have clearly formulated your desire and there is nothing bad in that. It becomes bad only when it is not granted and you revolt. You must understand at that moment that the desire or the aspiration that one has may not be very enlightened and that one might ask for a thing that is not exactly good for oneself. So one must be wise and say, "Let Thy Will be done". But so long as you have an inner perception and a
choice of your own, there is no harm in formulating it. It is quite a natural
movement. For example, if you have committed a fault and wish sincerely not to
repeat it, I do not see any harm in asking
Page – 127 for it. On the contrary, if you ask for it with a true inner sincerity, there is a great chance of its being granted. You must not believe that the Divine likes to contradict you. He is not at all particular about it. Only He may know better what exactly is good for you. He contradicts your aspiration only when it is absolutely indispensable. Otherwise he is always ready to grant you what you want.
If you have a very powerful imagination, and you build up a formation of your desire in all details and if the structure is well made, complete and existing by itself, then you may be sure that if you live long enough the thing will be realised. What is not put at the disposal of men is the time it takes: it may be tomorrow, it may be the next moment, or it may take years and even centuries, but it will be realised. If to this power of imagination you can add a kind of creative power of the vital, then you raise a wholly living force. Like all living forces tending towards manifestation, this force too will exercise a pressure upon earthly events in order to realise itself and it will realise itself. Only personal desires and personal circumstances are things that are not persistent or stable. After a time, a thing that interested you very much does not interest you any more: you think of another thing, you have another desire, you make another formation. But if the earlier formation had been well thought out and built up, then after having followed its course in space it would have realised itself. You are put in front of your first desire now realised while you have already embarked upon your second, or may be your third, or your fourth. You say then almost indignantly, "But I do not want that, why does it come to me?" – without however taking into account the fact that it is the result of your previous action. But if instead of being desires these are
aspirations for things spiritual, and if you follow your line of regular
progression, then it is absolutely certain that you will get one day what you
have imagined. It may be sooner, or it may be later if there are very many
obstacles on the way. For example, if you have made a formation that is still
foreign to the earth's atmosphere, then it may take some time to prepare the
conditions for its appearance.
Page – 128 But if it is something already realised many times upon earth and not too radical a transformation, then you can have it quickly, provided you follow the line with persistence. And if to that now you add the ardour of faith and trust in the Divine Grace and that self-giving to the Grace which makes you wait upon the Divine for everything, then it becomes a formidable matter. You can see before your eyes things happening more and more, the most wonderful things realised one after another. But there are conditions to fulfil: a great purity must be there and a great intensity in the self-giving and that absolute trust in the supreme wisdom of the Divine Grace which knows better than us what is truly good for ourselves. If the aspiration is offered to That and the offering is made truly and with enough intensity, the result will be marvellous. But then you must be able to see. When things are
realised, most often people find that quite natural; they do not care to see
even why and how it has so happened; they simply say, "Yes, but of course
it had to be so." And thus they lose the joy of gratefulness. After all,
if one can be full of gratefulness and gratitude for the Divine Grace, then
that is the last thing; you begin to see that at every step things are exactly
what they should be and the very best that can be. It is then that
Sachchidananda begins to gather Himself and refashion His Unity.
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