Chapter 16Vigilance, Resolution, Will and the Divine Help · Will and the Divine Force or Power

There are always two elements in spiritual success — one’s own steady will and endeavour and the Power that in one way or another helps and gives the result of the endeavour.

* The Force produces no definite and lasting fruit unless there is the will and the resolution to achieve in the sadhak.

* The higher action does not preclude a use of the will — will is an element of the higher action.

* These things [the removal of vital demand and ego] cannot be done in that way [by a direct higher action]. For transformation to be genuine, the difficulty has to be rejected by all the parts of the being. The Force can only help or enable them to do that, but it cannot replace this necessary action by a summary process. Your mind and inner being must impart their will to the whole.

* Yes. So long as there is not a constant action of the Force from above or else of a deeper Will from within, the mental will is necessary.

* You had written, “I need not bother about it — if peace is needed it will bring itself.” Certainly the main stress should be on the Force, but the active assent of the sadhak is needed; in certain things his will also may be needed as an instrument of the Force.

* It is true that the Force can work effectively without any effort on your part. It is not the effort, it is the assent of the being that it needs for its work.

* The Power can do everything, change everything and will do that but it can do it perfectly and easily and permanently only when your own will mental, vital and physical has been put on the side of the Truth. If you side with the vital ignorance and want to fight against your own spiritual change, it means a painful and difficult struggle before the work is done. That is why I insist on quietude at the very least and patient confidence with it, as far as you can — so that there may be a quiet and steady progress, not a painful and tormented movement full of relapse and struggle.

* Hardly anyone is strong enough to overcome by his own unaided aspiration and will the forces of the lower nature; even those who do it get only a certain kind of control, but not a complete mastery. Will and aspiration are needed to bring down the aid of the Divine Force and to keep the being on its side in its dealings with the lower powers. The Divine Force fulfilling the spiritual will and the heart’s psychic aspiration can alone bring about the conquest.

* There is only one way if you cannot exert your will — it is to call the Force; even to call only with the mind or the mental word is better than being entirely passive and submitted to the attack, — for although it may not succeed instantaneously, the mental call even ends by bringing the Force and opening up the consciousness again. For everything depends upon that. In the externalised consciousness obscurity and suffering can always be there; the more the internalised consciousness reigns, the more these things are pushed back and out and with the full internalised consciousness they cannot remain — if they come, it is as outside touches unable to lodge themselves in the being.

* The Force can bring forward and use the will.