Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

Effort and Grace

THERE are, we know, as Sri Aurobindo says, two powers which in their conjunction bring about the great consummation we aim at. It is personal effort from below and Divine Grace from above. The one prepares the field, the other fructifies and fulfils.

It has, however, always been declared that personal effort is not absolute in its effectivity, it is limited, relative and conditional: it does not by itself lead you to the final and supreme realisation; it takes you at the most to the threshold of Grace which follows up the work and brings it to its goal. Indeed it has also been said that personal effort itself is operative when inspired and impelled by the Grace from behind or from above. The Gita says in effect: By your effort and tapasya you are capable of withdrawing yourself from the mayic world of the senses, get detached from the sense-objects; but the secret attachment, the taste, the subtle interest for them goes only when the Supreme is visioned:

Raso’pyasya param drstva nivartate¹

The Upanishad also says: the highest is visible only when of its own accord It unveils itself:

Yamevaisa_ vrnute tena labhyah ²

The actual function or role of personal effort is that of a guide, like Virgil taking Dante through Hell and Purgatory and then arriving at the frontier of Paradise and there entrusting him into the hands of Beatrice. It is to give the preliminary

¹ The Gita: II, 59

² Katha UPanishad: II, 23

experiences, initiate into the basic mysteries in order to prepare the vessel that is to house the Supreme. The Supreme is not. amenable to your control whatever your effort may be, it is free, even eccentric – the wind bloweth where it listeth – the Grace goes wherever it chooses to go; it does not weigh or examine the amount of your preparation, it has its own manner of choosing. But the preparation that your personal effort effectuates is helpful for the working of the Grace not so much for its initial descent – It is, as I said, to prepare the adhar for holding, maintaining and establishing it.

We know too well:

Only a little the God-light can stay: . . .³

The whole problem is there: how to make the God-light stay here, stay here for ever. The higher light does come down, but fitfully, one is never certain of it. For it is as it were, "a scout in a reconnaissance from the sun." Here then is this special utility of personal effort, the service it can render,– to do the dredging, salvaging work. Personal effort with the egosense has been put there to find out and note the barriers and pitfalls, the faults and fissures in the human system, to overcome, remedy and correct them as far as possible. The human receptacle is normally impure and obscure, resistant and recalcitrant: the personal will and endeavour has to be called in to labour, to level and smoothen the field, breathe into it air and light. That is the work of the individual will, to make of the adhar a strong base, strong and capacious, to receive and hold the descent. The temple is to be made clean and pure and inviting so that when the deity arrives he will find a happy home for a permanent dwelling.

It must be noted however, in the last account the personal effort for self-purification and self-preparation is not altogether personal and mere effort; it is, as I have said, always supported and inspired by the secret presence and pressure of the higher Influence.

Still, personal effort on our part has a unique value in this sense that it means collaboration and goodwill and readiness of the being to fall in line with the cosmic work and the Divine

³ Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, Book 1, Canto I

plan: it signifies the assent of the lower consciousness to the working of the higher. What is required is conscious cooperation: unconscious cooperation is always there but it is, as it were, forced labour: does not the Lord declare to Nature

I will pursue thee across the century;

Thou shalt be hunted through the world by love,

Naked of ignorance' protecting veil. . .

Nowhere shalt thou escape my living eyes.4

Instead of the ill-will or unwillingness of the normal original ignorant being there comes about a change, a conversion to the light and truth. First the Inferno, then the Purgatory, finally there will be the Paradise. At the outset in the ignorance' the being withdraws, contracts, wriggles under the light touching it, its first impulse is to repel the newcomer. A conscious effort is a movement of correction against the instinctive reaction, it is a movement towards the right reaction of the being to the impact of the light. The whole being, the whole nature in all its parts and functions has to be corrected, re-oriented, gradually tempered and streamlined – polarised so that it is made one-pointed, supple and obedient and responsive. That is the process of fixing upon earth the fleeting Godhead.

Personal effort is thus a training in collaboration. From inertia and indifference, unwillingness and even positive hostility to rise into cooperation and comradeship, that is the discipline that personal effort gives to the mortal being, and then from cooperation and collaboration to union and identity with the Supreme Goal, effort merging into the spontaneous execution of the Divine Will, the personal melting into the impersonal Person – that is the consummation brought about by Grace.

4 Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, Book 11, Canto I

Page 286