Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 7

(A Letter)

You have written that you are only an ordinary man, not out of the ordinary like me. You do not dare to be above the average, for you believe that you are wanting in capacity and power that make a man extraordinary. And therefore you have to go through life as others. However, I ask you one thing, who has told you that you are a mere nobody? How are you so positive about the limits of your power without exercising it in the field of work? Have you understood yourself entirely? No, you will say, and you will add that your shortcomings and aberrations are the proof. How can one be great with such imperfections? In order to be great, one has to aspire and that aspiration you lack. But I see at the very outset, that you have formed a wrong conception about yourself. May it not be that under cover of your despair there lies hidden the fire of your aspiration? But you have found no chance to give it a practical form. It is there lying repressed. You are only cherishing a feeling of self-depreciation. Well, have you probed it? You are wide awake to your shortcomings. Have you ever tried to see your good qualities? Before you jump to a conclusion about your own capacities, do not look only at your faults, but also at your good qualities. And in truth, I see in you a number of good qualities. Faults you have, but have you no virtues? You will ask, to what extent? Well, look at both the extremes of your merits and demerits, and form no estimate of yourself in advance. Man is an amalgam of

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good and bad. As there is in him an adhara for good qualities, even so there is another for bad. You call me an extraordinary man, but if you had seen me when I was of your age, you would have simply said, "What a miserable fellow you are! You have gone to dogs. There's no hope for you." And if you go through history you will find that no great personality was born with an unqualified greatness. All of them, as it is with us, came into the world, burdened with hope and despair, desire and frustration. To me the tall talk that you hear about the wonderful exploits of their childhood and boyhood is no better than a cock-and-bull story. People fabricate such stories to attract our attention to them after they have become great. Before they rose to greatness these had passed unnoticed. Be sure, you too will hear many such stories about your early life the moment you grow into a great personality. You may, however, say that all and sundry cannot become great. It is only a few that are actually great and it is God's Grace or the results of their actions in their previous lives that have made them so. There's no building on the sand. But who says that there is no power dormant in you? Or that you have no virtues acquired in your past lives? Or that you have no Grace of God? Who says that you .are only sand? So I tell you, first try to know yourself. And before trying to do so bear in mind the words of St. Paul: "I know not what I am". Start life with this approach. 'I know nothing about myself. I do not know whether I am an ordinary or extraordinary personality. I will come to know of it at long last.' Just begin the experiment on you to know yourself. Scrutinise yourself with a bold heart. Experiment on yourself like a scientist. Try to discover all your virtues and vices. As a matter of fact, the more you bring to the fore your vices, the more will you automatically see your virtues.

Man is a bottomless mine of gems. Above, there, are many layers of sand, stone, clay and Goal intermixed. The deeper you dive, the more you glimpse the real gems. The deeper

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still you go, you will find less and still less of mixture – there's only the gem. You have lost heart at the sight of sand, stone and coal that are on the surface. Man, as man, is such a mine. I don't say that diamonds are found in every mine. But be sure, something useful and valuable can be found in it. To an individual this precious thing is his individuality, I mean, his speciality. You will be a great personage, but that does not mean that you will grow into a Napoleon or a Buddha. And even if you could, I think, you must not try to be so. For to be a mere Napoleon or a mere Buddha is not the ideal of the world. Everybody must be his own self. Your whole greatness lies in what you should be.

You have to recognise that you are a mass of energy. Indeed, you have potentiality, whatever be your failure to manifest it fully and integrally. To be conscious of this power, to make it dynamic, to awaken this potentiality is to manifest your own individuality, your own uniqueness. Only you are not to measure this power, this potentiality by something else. Do you know the limit of the power that resides within you? In other words, this hidden power, this speciality of yours is the divine quality, is God himself. And surrender to the Divine means to let the hidden power act according to its will within you to make you calm and quiet and free your inner being from all limitations.

One more word and I stop for the moment. Just observe that our society lays great stress on modesty. If the word modesty means only to belittle oneself, to make nothing of oneself, one need not be modest at all. But what is the true meaning of modesty? It is simply to keep off pride and vanity. But pride, i.e., to boast, to give oneself airs, to look upon oneself as a big gun – all these we generally call vanity. Besides these, pride has other forms. There is a rajasic way of displaying one's pride. Truly; to think oneself poor, sinful, miserable, inferior to all, is also a sign of pride. All this is called tamasic pride. The word pride actually means I am aloof and unique, other than all you people.

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Man is a bundle of virtues and vices. The root of pride either rajasic or tamasic must be pulled out, for it does not allow us to see or manifest the Truth. Besides, there is another kind of-pride, called sattwic pride (illumined pride). We must rise above all the three modes of pride. We do not want any kind of pride. What we want is self-surrender. Behind your modesty there lies the pride of your ignorance and self-debasement. The rajasic pride is better than this tamasic one. For tamas makes you absolutely inactive, and owing to the influence of rajas you become full of life, full of dynamism and self-confidence. What is wanted is that you should purify this self-confidence. I hope, you will gradually be aware of all the forms of pride and you will be able steadily to remove them so that your whole being may be filled with the glory of your own true Self that resides deep within you.

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