The Divine Will – Readings from Synthesis of Yoga

For those who have been acquainted with the yogic way of life, the mention of supreme will or divine will is not new. In Bhagawat Gita, Krishna postulates Arjuna about the ideal nature of work. Lord Krishna says that the supreme quality of work occurs when an individual lets himself be driven by the Divine Will.

The human mode of working is driven by basic survival instincts, the instincts that severely diminish our perception of consciousness and serve our egoistic existence. The most ordinary mode of working is directed towards the fulfillment of our outward desires and necessities. Our life becomes enslaved to food, sex, and security. The needs of the body become central to everything that an individual does. The second in the ladder is when our work becomes oeuvre, an artistic form of work, creativity through the mind when our mental, psychic, emotional being is directed towards non-essential in terms of survival such as interests, aspirations, and experiences. These are not absolutely essential for bodily existence but have an appeal for greater experiences in the non-physical plane.

The third step as Sri Aurobindo describes in his book in the Synthesis of Yoga is the step when one is purely letting the divine will take over every aspect of our life, be it the works that are concerned with the existential or non-essential form of work that is done to fulfill the greater aspirations.

There is a natural question that arises in the mind, what is a divine will? How does it get hold of our life? What is the nature of Divine will? Is it personal or impersonal? If it is impersonal, why would this divine be concerned with the survival of the body? Is Divine Will selective? These are some fundamental questions that have no immediate or rational answers probably as answering them or becoming convinced of such an operator. Why would something impersonal and universal take a personal and individualized action?

For example, how would Divine Will act on a person who is hungry?

It makes me think of another explanation. The explanation may seem to be contradictory but I think all of us could start with an axiom. The axiom says, ” Every action in the universe is the effect of Divine Will set in motion.” This means that every action that one thinks one is doing, be it hunting for food or painting art, or enduring the pain while meditating. These actions are all in effect manifestations of Divine Will.

Our movements depend on what dominates our life. The quality of life is animalistic if bodily existence becomes the whole purpose of life. In the next course of evolution, man tends to become a mental being, where life energies are expended in ideas and ideals. These ideas and ideals too are not fully tightened by divine will, they wear the garb of Truth, there is some amount of truth sprinkled here and there but it is not fully illumined. Complete illumination of human endeavor occurs when the Divine Will takes charge of the life.

When ideas and ideals dominate the desire for food, one can say that the urge has shifted from body to mind. As Sri Aurobindo says, whenever mental life dominates bodily life diminishes. There is a new light that our movements are guided from. Now, the next phase of evolution is to diminish or more aptly traverse mental life and let the spiritual life take over. For this, because of the conscious nature of human beings, we can actively participate in the endeavor along with the divine play.

This complete illumination doesn’t transpire until humans stick to the sensory or cognitive faculties of knowing. A blind man’s perspective of the elephant is incomplete till he/she opens his/her eyes, or not even that till the brain is capable of processing the 3-D view of the elephant, the configuration is partially known. A blind man’s perspective is not wrong, but it is incomplete.

An action without a reason is a Divine Action, an action with infinite consciousness.

Written by veda

Mis à jour le 11/07/2021 | Publié le 11/07/2021

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