The human and the divine⁵

Dear seekers of the highest Truth, I wish to give a short talk on the human and the divine.

Our outer essence is human; our inner essence is divine. The human world is the desire-world. The divine world is the aspiration-world. In the desire-world, when we get something we immediately cry out, “Eureka, I have found it! This is it.” But in the divine world, when we get something we say to ourselves, “There is something else I need, something higher, deeper, more illumining and more fulfilling.” This sense of dissatisfaction is not bad or undivine. This kind of dissatisfaction makes us feel that we are destined to grow into something infinitely higher than what we are now.

Human right and divine right. Human right tells us that we dare to defend our rights. This is the motto of the State of Alabama: "We dare defend our rights". Now why do we want to defend our rights? Because we feel that our skills and capacities are not properly appreciated and admired, that we are to some extent exploited. Therefore we feel that it is our bounden duty to defend our rights. The divine in us also tells us that we must dare to defend our rights. But in this case, it is our divine right to offer our inner message to the world at large, our divine right to tell ignorance that we belong to the Supreme alone. We are of the divine and we are for the divine. We cannot mix with ignorance and we must not allow ourselves to be devoured by ignorance. True, we have wallowed in the pleasures of ignorance for millennia. But that does not mean that we shall not exercise our divine right to go deep within and bring to the fore the Light infinite to inundate the world of suffering and darkness.

The human in us wants to discover if there is any Truth, Light and Divinity in others. It is in doubt whether others have these qualities. But the divine in us knows that Truth, Light and Divinity are everywhere. They are not the monopoly of any individual; everybody has deep within him Peace, Light and Bliss in infinite measure.

The human in us wants to see the face of reality, so that it can change the reality to suit its own desires. The divine in us wants to see the face of reality so it can grow into the very image of the transcendental Reality.

The human in us constantly cries for success, more success, abundant success. But the divine in us wants progress, constant progress, inner and outer. This progress is founded entirely upon self-giving, and self-giving is the precursor of God-becoming.

The human in us wants to possess the world so it can utilise the world in its own way. Alas, to its extreme sorrow it sees that before it possesses the world, the world has already possessed it mercilessly. The divine in us wants to offer its very existence to the world; it wants to illumine the world with its love and selfless dedication. Lo and behold, it sees that before it has illumined the world, the world has illumined it totally.

The human in us wants to realise God the Power so that it can lord it over the world. The divine in us needs the God who is all Good. The human in us prays to God and meditates on God and hopes to bring God down to satisfy its teeming desires. The human in us prays to God for its own satisfaction. But the divine in us prays and meditates so that God can utilise us in His own Way, in a divine Way, in a supreme Way.

The human in us wants to move from the door of the body to the room of the soul. It wants to go from the body to the soul through the vital, the mind and the heart. The divine in us wants to do the same thing, but the other way around. It wants to go from the soul to the heart, from the heart to the mind, from the mind to the vital, from the vital to the body. The divine in us feels that since the soul has Light, we have to enter into the soul's room first and from there enter into the other rooms, which are obscure, unlit and undivine.

When the human in us becomes sincere, we realise the undeniable fact that we need transformation: the transformation of the body, the transformation of the vital, the transformation of the mind and the transformation of the heart.

Right now, the body is constantly wallowing in the pleasures of ignorance, consciously and deliberately. But there shall come a time when this very body will try to aspire and try to serve the divine, here on earth and there in Heaven.

Right now, the vital in us is aggressive and destructive, but this very vital will one day aspire to become dynamic and progressive. Right now the vital in us will say, like Julius Caesar, "Veni, vidi, vici": I came, I saw, I conquered. But this same vital, when it gets illumination, will say, "I came into the world to love the world, to embrace the world, to become one with the world."

Right now, the mind in us suspects the world, judges the world, doubts the world. But the same mind, when it cries for illumination in the near or distant future, will realise that it has come into the world to perfect the world's ignorance and illumine others. But before it illumines others, it will feel the necessity of self-illumination; it will realise that its ability to perfect others entirely depends on its own perfection. So the mind will perfect itself first and then offer its perfection to the aspiring world.

Right now, the heart in us is insecure, weak and impotent. It sees the Vast, but it does not want to establish its inseparable oneness with the Vast, precisely because it is badly frightened. But when the human heart is transformed into the divine heart, it will throw open its door to the world at large and there all humanity will find a haven. The heart will become inseparably one with God’s creation. By becoming one with God’s entire creation, it will feel that it has fulfilled its promise to the soul and its mission on earth. Its promise was that it would receive the soul’s light in boundless measure, and its mission was consciously to serve humanity with this light.

The soul, too, has made a promise, a promise to God and to man. To God, the soul has made the solemn promise that it will manifest divinity on earth; and to mankind, the soul has promised that it will liberate the body from the meshes of ignorance. Here “body” means the body-consciousness, which includes the physical, the vital, the mental and the psychic. The soul is bound to fulfil its promises to God and man.

Each human being becomes a conscious instrument of God when he enters sincerely into the spiritual life, the life of aspiration and dedication. Before that, he is in the world of ignorance, the world of sleep. But the impossibility which looms large in this human life need not and cannot forever remain with us. Our life of ignorance will eventually be transcended. Our essence, deep within us, is divine, and what we have within is bound to come to the fore at God’s choice Hour.

The human in us wants to discover the Light; the divine in us wants to reveal the Light, which it feels it has always had. When the human in us aspires, it wants to grow and become. But the divine in us constantly knows that it eternally is.

The human in us will be fulfilled only when it consciously accepts the dictates of our inner divinity. The divine in us will fulfil itself only when it transforms, illumines and perfects the human in us. By the transformation of the human in us and the manifestation of the divine in us, we grow into perfect Perfection.

The human in us prays:

Hiranmayena patrena satyasyapihitam mukham
tat tvam pusan apavrinu satyadharmaya dristaye

The progressive divine in us says:

Vedaham etam purusam mahantam
aditya varnam tamasah parastat

And the Transcendental, the all-pervading Divine in us, says: