Essay: The Progressive Stages of the Quest (The Working of Grace) "On the day of life's surrender I shall die desiring Thee; I shall yield my spirit craving of Thy street the dust to be."
--Humamud Din (Fourteenth-century Persian mystic)
In these poetic lines is expressed the lengths to which the mystic must be willing to go to obtain Grace.
Only if a man falls in love with his soul as deeply as he has ever done with a woman will he even stand a chance of finding it. Incessant yearning for the higher self, in a spirit of religious devotion, is one of the indispensable aspects of the fourfold integral quest. The note of yearning for this realization must sound through all his prayer and worship, concentration and meditation. Sometimes the longing for God may affect him even physically with abrupt dynamic force, shaking his whole body, and agitating his whole nervous system. A merely formal practice of meditation is quite insufficient although not quite useless. For without the yearning the advent of Grace is unlikely, and without Grace there can never be any realization of the Overself.
The very fact that a man has consciously begun the quest is itself a manifestation of Grace, for he has begun to seek the Overself only because the Overself's own working has begun to make it plain to him, through the sense of unbearable separation from it, that the right moment for this has arrived. The aspirant should therefore take heart and feel hope. He is not really walking alone. The very love which has awakened within him for the Overself is a reflection of the love which is being shown towards him.
Thus the very search upon which he has embarked, the studies he is making, and the meditations he is practising are all inspired by the Overself from the beginning and sustained by it to the end. The Overself is already at work even before he begins to seek it. Indeed he has taken to the quest in unconscious obedience to the divine prompting. And that prompting is the first movement of Grace. Even when he believes that he is doing these things for himself, it is really Grace that is opening the heart and enlightening the mind from behind the scenes.
Man's initiative pushes on toward the goal, whilst divine Grace draws him to it. Both forces must combine if the process is to be completed and crowned with success. Yet that which originally made the goal attractive to him and inspired him with faith in it and thus gave rise to his efforts, was itself the Grace. In this sense Paul's words, "For by Grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves," become more intelligible.
The Grace of God is no respecter of persons or places. It comes to the heart that desires it most whether that heart be in the body of a king or of a commoner, a man of action or a recluse. John Bunyan the poor tinker, immured in Bedford gaol, saw a Light denied to many kings and tried to write it down in his book Pilgrim's Progress. Jacob Boehme, working at his cobbler's bench in Seideburg, was thrice illumined and gleaned secrets which he claimed were unknown to the universities of his time.
If a man has conscientiously followed this fourfold path, if he has practised mystical meditation and metaphysical reflection, purification of character and unselfish service, and yet seems to be remote from the goal, what is he to do? He has then to follow the admonition of Jesus: "Ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you." He has literally to ask for Grace out of the deep anguish of his heart. We are all poor. He is indeed discerning who realizes this and becomes a beggar, imploring of God for Grace.
He must pray first to be liberated from the heavy thraldom of the senses, the desires, and the thoughts. He must pray next for the conscious presence of the Overself. He should pray silently and deeply in the solitude of his own heart. He should pray with concentrated emotion and tight-held mind. His yearning for such liberation and such presence must be unquestionably sincere and unquestionably strong. He should begin and close--and even fill if he wishes--his hour of meditation with such noble prayers. He must do this day after day, week after week. For the Overself is not merely a concept, but a living reality, the power behind all his other and lesser powers.
No aspirant who is sincere and sensitive will be left entirely without help. It may appear during temptation when the lower nature may find itself unexpectedly curbed by a powerful idea working strongly against it. He may find in a book just that for which he has been waiting and which at this particular time will definitely help him on his way. The particular help he needs at a particular stage will come naturally. It may take the form of a change in outward circumstances or a meeting with a more developed person, of a printed book or a written letter, of a sudden unexpected emotional inspiration or an illuminating intellectual intuition. Nor is it necessary to travel to the farthest point before being able to gather the fruits. Long before this, he will begin to enjoy the flavour of peace, hope, knowledge, and divine transcendence.
In the moment that a man willingly deserts his habitual standpoint under a trying situation and substitutes this higher one, in that moment he receives Grace. With this reception a miracle is performed and the evil of the lower standpoint is permanently expelled from his character. The situation itself both put him to the proof and gave him his chance.
The factuality of Grace does not cancel out the need of moral choice and personal effort. It would be a great mistake to stamp human effort as useless in the quest and to proclaim human inability to achieve its own salvation as complete. For if it is true that Divine Grace alone can bring the quest to a successful terminus, it is likewise true that human effort must precede and thus invoke the descent of Grace. What is needed to call down Grace is, first, a humility that is utter and complete, deeply earnest and absolutely sincere, secondly, an offering of self to the Overself, a dedication of earthly being to spiritual essence, and, thirdly, a daily practice of devotional exercise. The practices will eventually yield experiences, the aspirations will eventually bring assistance. The mysterious intrusion of Grace may change the course of events. It introduces new possibilities, a different current of destiny.
Our need of salvation, of overcoming the inherently sinful and ignorant nature of ego, isolated from true consciousness as it is, is greater than we ever comprehend. For our life, being so largely egotistic, is ignorant and sinful--a wandering from one blunder to another, one sin to another. This salvation is by the Overself's saving power, for which we must seek its Grace, approaching it with the childlike humility of which Jesus spoke. No man is so down, so sinful, so weak, or so beaten that he may not make a fresh start. Let him adopt a childlike attitude, placing himself in the hands of his higher self, imploring it for guidance and Grace. He should repeat this at least daily, and even oftener. Then let him patiently wait and carefully watch for the intuitive response during the course of the following weeks or months. He need not mind his faults. Let him offer himself, just as he is, to the God, or Soul, he seeks. It is not indifferent nor remote.
The forgiveness of sins is a fact. Those who deny this deny their own experience. Can they separate from the moon its light? Then how can they separate forgiveness from love? Do they not see a mother forgive her child a hundred times even though she reproves and chastises it?
If the retribution of sins is a cosmic law, so also is the remission of sins. We must take the two at once, and together, if we would understand the mystery aright.
We humans are fallible beings prone to commit errors. If we do not become penitents and break with our past, it is better that we should be left to the natural consequences of our wrong-doing than that we should be forgiven prematurely.
The value of repentance is that it is the first step to set us free from a regrettable past; of amendment, that it is the last step to do so. There must be a contrite consciousness that to live in ego is to live in ignorance and sin. This sin is not the breaking of social conventions. There must be penitent understanding that we are born in sin because we are born in ego and hence need redemption and salvation. It is useless to seek forgiveness without first being thoroughly repentant. There must also be an opening up of the mind to the truth about one's sinfulness, besides repentance, an understanding of the lesson behind this particular experience of its result.
When St. Paul speaks in his Epistle to the Hebrews of the Christ who offered to bear the sins of many, he may be mystically interpreted as meaning the Christ-Self, the Overself, who offers to bear the Karma of many ego-incarnations.
This primary attribute is extolled in the world's religio-mystical literature. "Despair not of Allah's mercy," says the Koran. "What are my sins compared with Thy mercy? They are but as a cobweb before the wind," wrote an early Russian mystic, Dmitri of Rostov. "Those who surrender to me, even be they of sinful nature, shall understand the highest path," says the Bhagavad Gita.
Yes, there is forgiveness because there is God's love. Jesus was not mistaken when he preached this doctrine, but it is not a fact for all men alike. Profound penitence and sincere amendment are prerequisite conditions to calling it forth. It was one of the special tasks of Jesus to make known that compassion (or love, as the original word was translated) is a primary attribute of God and that Grace, pardon, and redemption are consequently primary features of God's active relation to man. When Jesus promised the repentant thief that he would be forgiven, Jesus was not deceiving the thief or deluding himself. He was telling the truth.
The Divine being what it is, how could it contradict its own nature if compassion had no place in its qualities? The connection between the benignity which every mystic feels in its presence and the compassion which Jesus ascribed to that presence, is organic and inseparable.
The discovery that the forgiveness of sins is a sacred fact should fill us with inexpressible joy. For it is the discovery that there is compassionate love at the heart of the universe.
We may suppress sins by personal effort but we can eradicate and overcome them by the Overself's Grace alone. If we ask only that the external results of our sin be forgiven, be sure they won't. But if we also strive to cleanse our character from the internal evil that caused the sin, forgiveness may well be ours.
The aspirant's best hope lies in repentance. But if he fails to recognize this, if he remains with unbowed head and unregenerate heart, the way forward will likewise remain stony and painful. The admission that he is fallible and weak will be wrung from him by the punishments of nature if he will not yield it by the perceptions of conscience. The first value of repentance is that it makes a break with an outworn past. The second value is that it opens the way to a fresh start. Past mistakes cannot be erased but future ones can be avoided. The man that he was must fill him with regrets; the man that he seeks to be with hopes. He must become keenly conscious of his own sinfulness. The clumsy handiwork of his spiritual adolescence will appall him whenever he meditates upon its defects. His thought must distrust and purge itself of these faults. He will at certain periods feel impelled to reproach himself for faults shown, wrongs done, and sins committed during the past. This impulse should be obeyed. His attitude must so change that he is not merely ready but even eager to undo the wrongs that he has done and to make restitution for the harm that he has caused.
We do not get at the Real by our own efforts alone nor does it come to us by its own volition alone. Effort that springs from the self and Grace that springs from beyond it are two things essential to success in this quest. The first we can all provide, but the second only the Overself can provide. Man was once told by someone who knew, "The Spirit bloweth where it listeth." Thus it is neither contradictory nor antithetic to say that human effort and human dependence upon Divine Grace are both needed. For there is a kind of reciprocal action between them. This reciprocal working of Grace is a beautiful fact. The subconscious invitation from the Overself begets the conscious invocation of it as an automatic response. When the ego feels attracted towards its sacred source, there is an equivalent attraction on the Overself's part towards the ego itself. Never doubt that the Divine always reciprocates this attraction to it of the human self. Neither the latter's past history nor present character can alter that blessed hope-bringing fact. Grace is the final, glorious, and authentic proof that it is not only man that is seeking God, but also God that is ever waiting for man.
The Grace is a heavenly superhuman gift. Those who have never felt it and consequently rush into incautious denial of its existence are to be pitied. Those who flout the possibility and deny the need of a helping Grace can be only those who have become victims of a cast-iron intellectual system which could not consistently give a place to it.
It was a flaming experience of Grace which changed Saul, the bitter opponent, into Paul, the ardent apostle.
This is the paradox, that although a man must try to conquer himself if he would attain the Overself, he cannot succeed in this undertaking except by the Overself's own power--that is, by the Grace "which burns the straw of desires" as Mahopanishad poetically puts it. It is certain that such an attainment is beyond his ordinary strength.
All that the ego can do is to create the necessary conditions out of which enlightenment generally arises, but it cannot create this enlightenment itself. By self-purification, by constant aspiration, by regular meditation, by profound study, and by an altruistic attitude in practical life, it does what is prerequisite. But all this is like tapping at the door of the Overself. Only the latter's Grace can open it in the end.
The will has its part in this process, but it is not the only part. Sooner or later he will discover that he can go forward no farther in its sole dependence, and that he must seek help from something beyond himself. He must indeed call for Grace to act upon him. The need of obtaining help from outside his ordinary self and from beyond his ordinary resources in this tremendous struggle becomes urgent. It is indeed a need of Grace. Fortunately for him this Grace is available, although it may not be so on his own terms.
At a certain stage he must learn to "let go" more and allow the Overself to possess him, rather than strain to possess something which he believes to be still eluding him. Every aspirant who has passed it will remember how he leapt ahead when he made this discovery.
At another stage, the Overself, whose Grace was the initial impetus to all his efforts, steps forward, as it were, and begins to reveal its presence and working more openly. The aspirant becomes conscious of this with awe, reverence, and thankfulness. He must learn to attend vigilantly to these inward promptings of Divine Grace. They are like sunbeams that fructify the earth.
With the descent of Grace, all the anguish and ugly memories of the seeker's past and the frustrations of the present are miraculously sponged out by the Overself's unseen and healing hand. He knows that a new element has entered into his field of consciousness, and he will unmistakably feel from that moment a blessed quickening of inner life. When his own personal effort subsides, a further effort begins on his behalf by a higher power. Without any move on his own part, Grace begins to do for him what he could not do for himself, and under its beneficent operation he will find his higher will strengthening, his moral attitude improving, and his spiritual aspiration increasing.
The consciousness of being under the control of a higher influence will become unmistakable to him. The conviction that it is achieving moral victories for him which he could not have achieved by his ordinary self, will become implanted in him. A series of remarkable experiences will confirm the fact that some beneficent power has invaded his personality and is ennobling, elevating, inspiring, and guiding it. An exultant freedom takes possession of him. It displaces all his emotional forebodings and personal burdens.
Grace is received, not achieved. A man must be willing to let its influx move freely through his heart; he must not obstruct its working nor impede its ruling by any break in his own self-surrender. He can possess Grace only when he lets it possess him.
Philosophy affirms the existence of Grace, that what the most strenuous self-activity cannot gain may be put in our hands as a divine gift.
As at the beginning, so at the end of this path, the unveiling of the Overself is not an act of any human will. Only the Divine Will--that is, only its own Grace--can bring about the final all-revealing act, whose sustained consciousness turns the aspirant into an adept.
In seeking the Overself, the earnest aspirant must seek it with heartfelt love. Indeed, his whole quest must be ardently imbued with this feeling. Can he love the Divine purely and disinterestedly for its own sake? This is the question he must ask himself. If this devotional love is to be something more than frothy feeling, it will have to affect and redeem the will. It will have to heighten the sense of, and obedience to, moral duty. Because of this devotion to something which transcends his selfish interests, he can no longer seek his selfish advantage at the expense of others. His aim will be not only to love the soul but to understand it, not only to hear its voice in meditation but to live out its promptings in action.
-- Notebooks Category 2: Overview of Practices Involved > Chapter 9 : Conclusion > # 67
