Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1

There's a Divinity

There's a Divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will. *

That is what man can do at his best, and even at his worst, rough-hew. Ignorant as he is, crude as his instruments are, he can do no better (and happily, no worse either). The ideals he has do not go very far, not much beyond his nose – they are limited by his senses, by his notions, by his immediate reactions to the circumstances of the moment. Even when the ends are commendable, the purposes decent, even when he is happily inspired, the materials and means at his disposal are crude and he uses them in a rough and ready manner. What he can achieve in this direction is not even a near but a very far approximate. And w hen he is otherwise inspired, when suggestions and impulsions come to him from the Hostiles, well, he hews his way, as Hitler did – and some others are doing now – to wrong ends; even there he does not succeed wholly, realises his design very partially, grosso modo. The stone club in the hand of the palaeolithic man and the atom bomb in the hand of the modern are equally rough instruments, and the ends which they serve, whether for good or for evil, are also gross, neither far-visioned nor deep inspired, but superficial, strait and narrow, blindly immediate. In either case, however, the Divine remains unaffected, firmly seated behind and in and through both, in and through their ignorant and perverse wills, it is His Will that works itself out and finds fulfilment in the end. Whether one is for or against the Divine, whether one is a God or an Asura, each in his own way contributes to the progressive realisation of

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* Hamlet, Act v, Sc. ii

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the Cosmic Purpose. From a certain point of view even it may seem as though nothing helps or hinders, all are like a straw in a rushing current.

In our human reckoning, we seem to help the evolutionary course sometimes and sometimes hamper it with our efforts in so far as they are well directed or ill directed. In the practice of spiritual life too, one may be tempted to find a measurable proportion between the personal endeavour and the attainment. However that may be, at the end of all human efforts, the finishing touch always comes from the Divine Grace. Whether we succeed or fail, whatever be the human judgment of the situation, the Grace is sure to intervene in the final stage: to success it will bring more success giving it the peak of fulfilment, and failure too it will transmute into a glorious triumph.

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