The search for God, the effort to find the Divine and to unite with Him is a difficult and long journey, full of inner and outer obstacles, and long periods of apparent stagnation when nothing seems to be happening. The seeker is assailed with doubts. He asks himself whether the journey will ever end, whether he will reach his goal and find the Divine.
At such times a question arises:
Question: Did I take the right decision in setting out on this spiritual journey? Do I have the necessary capacity, will I ever be able to overcome the shortcomings and obstacles I find in myself? Will I ever be able to find the Divine and unite with him?
Here for the new year, are two excerpts, one from a letter of Sri Aurobindo and the other a talk of the Mother, extremely beautiful and full of a Divine assurance in our ultimate destiny. There is an absolute certitude…
If you desire only the Divine, there is an absolute certitude that you will reach the Divine, but all these questionings and repinings at each movement only delay and keep an impending curtain before the heart and the eyes. For at every step, when one makes an advance, the opposite forces will throw these doubts like a rope between the legs and stop one short with a stumble-it is their métier to do that….
One must say, “Since I want only the Divine, my success is sure, I have only to walk forward in all confidence and His own Hand will be there secretly leading me to Him by His own way and at His own time.” That is what you must keep as your constant mantra.
Anything else one may doubt but that he who desires only the Divine shall reach the Divine is a certitude and more certain than two and two make four. That is the faith every sadhak must have at the bottom of his heart, supporting him through every stumble and blow and ordeal.
Sri Aurobindo
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If even once you have said…
In the depths of your consciousness is the psychic being, the temple of the Divine within you. This is the centre round which should come about the unification of all these divergent parts, all these contradictory movements of your being. Once you have got the consciousness of the psychic being and its aspiration, these doubts and difficulties can be destroyed. It takes more or less time, but you will surely succeed in the end.
Once you have turned to the Divine, saying, “I want to be yours”, and the Divine has said, “Yes”, the whole world cannot keep you from it. When the central being has made its surrender, the chief difficulty has disappeared.
The outer being is like a crust. In ordinary people the crust is so hard and thick that they are not conscious of the Divine within them. If once, even for a moment only, the inner being has said, “I am here and I am yours”, then it is as though a bridge has been built and little by little the crust becomes thinner and thinner until the two parts are wholly joined and the inner and the outer become one.
The Mother
