Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3

"IF you know how to wait, you gain time". Usually, when you are about to do a thing, the impulse is to rush towards it and rush it through; between the idea and the execution you do not want to leave any gap. You are in a haste to see the thing done. You do not care to pause and look about you, view and weigh the conditions and circumstances, think out the best way of working towards the goal. The result of the hustle is failure, very often dead failure. You have to begin over again. You may even have to begin over and over again if you do not learn the lesson given. Evidently, you lose time, lose energy and lose your success. On the contrary, what you have to do before you actually take up your work is not to jump at it, but understand what it means and involves, have before your mind's eye a clear figure or pattern of the thing to be undertaken, not to go upon a vague and indefinite notion about it, something that will take shape – that will take care of itself – as you proceed. You must have a clear conception of your work and also you must find out the exact ways and means, have at your elbow the best possible implements. It is only when you are fully armed with the necessary equipment that you can be sure of success without any waste of time or energy.

And then there is a time, a propitious time for everything. A thing cannot be done at any time, it has its own appointed hour; you cannot succeed even if you attempt a hundred times before that hour strikes. But when the time is ripe, how easily a thing seems to get done! In what does this ripeness of time consist, what are the marks of the propitious hour? It is when you are in complete possession of the right instruments and when the disposition of circumstances is such that they

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concur to help and execute and not mar and obstruct. But how to find out or recognise when such conditions are available? Not by your mind or external reasoning. You must have the intuition, and instinctive perception of the situation. Always the indication is there in the very poise of your consciousness. That is to say, when it is filled with a great calm, trust and confidence, a luminous concentration.

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