The inner promise³⁷

The inner promise is a seeker’s inner progress. This progress inspires him, energises him and helps him to please God in God’s own Way. The outer promise we make quite often, but the inner promise we make no more than once or twice during our life span. The outer promise we make, but the inner promise we keep. We try to live up to this inner promise and we try to manifest it on earth.

The outer promise we make to ignorance, to teeming ignorance; but the inner promise we make to God.

Our outer promise is to torture the world either consciously or unconsciously, or to try to destroy the world.

To change the face of the world and to fulfil the world with the Divine Will, this is our inner promise that we have made to God.

Now, there are three significant steps to this inner promise:

God is to be seen.
God is to be felt.
God is to be realised.

To see God, we have to be far, far away from the snares of darkness and ignorance.

To feel God, we have to live in the domain and realm of aspiration, the mounting flame within us.

To realise God, we have to grow into divine, constant and supreme surrender.

After we have attained God-realisation, there are two most significant steps, two more significant promises we have to make. These promises are God revelation and God-manifestation.

God-revelation is the promise made by God-realised souls on the strength of their unconditional concern for suffering humanity.

God-manifestation is the unconditional promise of God-realised souls to love mankind unconditionally and to manifest the Reality of Divinity here on earth.

In our day-to-day life, we see a child making promises to his mother: he will not tell a lie, he will not do anything wrong. But unfortunately, he does tell lies, he does make mistakes. Yet the mother has boundless patience. She feels that sooner or later her child will tell the truth and do everything right. Then, as a young boy, a teenager, he does quite a few things wrong and he promises his parents that he will not do them any more. Unfortunately, he fails to keep his promise. But his parents have the capacity to forgive him. They feel that either today or tomorrow he will turn over a new leaf. This is the inner confidence that they have in their son.

In the spiritual life also, many seekers make an inner promise, an inner commitment. They say they will enter into the spiritual life and give real importance to the life of purity, the life of aspiration, the life of realisation. But unfortunately, they fail to fulfil their promise. Nevertheless, God’s boundless Compassion never abandons them. God, with His adamantine Will and Vision of the ever-transcending Beyond, sees that these seekers will sooner or later enter onto the right path and walk, march, run towards the Destined Goal.

Then there are some advanced seekers who have made considerable progress in their inner life, and who have made a promise to their own inner beings and to God that they will not give up their spiritual quest until they have realised God. God-realisation is their sole aim. But, as ill-luck would have it, after having some higher experiences, they do not want to march further. They feel that these experiences are more than enough, at least for this life. So they do not want to go any further. They do not need or do not want God-realisation at this point, so God-realisation remains a far cry for them.

But God knows that these seekers entered into the spiritual life with utmost sincerity and made considerable progress. Only now they do not want to run towards their Destined Goal. They do not want to reach the farthest end of the Golden Shore.

Again God, with His boundless Compassion, observes the situation and tells the seekers, “Look, you will never be fulfilled. You will never see the face of satisfaction until you have seen the Golden Shore. You have not fulfilled your promise. But My Promise to you is unconditional. I shall wait for you. I shall take you, carry you, to the Destined Shore of the Golden All at My choice Hour. If you do not want to run fast, faster, fastest, it is up to you; but you have to know that nobody on earth can remain unrealised, unfulfilled.”

Each individual has to realise the highest Truth, but he who aspires will naturally reach the Goal sooner than the others who are still in the world of sleep.

As human beings, most of us are extremely clever. We are clever, but we are not wise. We try to deceive other human beings. Not only that, we go to the length of deceiving our Inner Pilot, God. In spite of knowing that we can never, never deceive the Inner Pilot, we unconsciously and sometimes even consciously try to deceive the Inner Pilot, God. We tell God, “O God, if You give us some inner wealth (that is to say, peace, light and bliss), we shall offer half of it to mankind. We shall not use it all for ourselves.” It is just like saying to God, “If You give me a dollar, I will give half to mankind and keep only half for myself.”

Now, God observes our sincerity. He examines the face of our sincerity and sees whether we are really sincere. And what happens? God gives us some peace, light, bliss and other divine qualities, but we feel that it is not satisfactory. What do we do? Immediately we say, “O God, You have not given me the full amount, the full quantity. I wanted to have a dollar, but You have given me only half a dollar. You are very clever. You have already kept half a dollar for Yourself, that is to say, for humanity. So I do not have to give humanity the peace, light and bliss that I already have.”

How we try to deceive the divinity in humanity! Everybody here at this place has something to offer: peace, light, bliss, sincerity, simplicity. There is nobody on earth who is not in a position to help the rest of mankind. This help, this service, if I can use the term ‘service’, can be offered by any individual here on earth.

If somebody feels that he is more sincere than somebody else, then let his sincerity be shared with other persons.

If somebody feels that he is purer than somebody else, than his neighbours or friends, then let him share his purity.

If somebody feels than he has more aspiration than his friends or neighbours, then let him share it.

This is the promise that we can make to God at every moment.

Then we come to realise that every time the soul enters into the field of creation and manifestation, it makes a most solemn promise to God, the Pilot Supreme, to try its utmost to reveal God here on earth. But, unfortunately, when the soul enters into the world, the sea of ignorance tries to envelop the soul. Then the body, vital, mind and heart consciously or unconsciously get pleasure in identifying themselves with the ignorance-sea. But the soul is all-forgiving. It does not cast aside the body, vital, mind and heart. It has boundless patience.

If this body, vital, mind and heart identify themselves with the soul, and if they want to see the Truth with the soul’s eye — if that is their promise, their only promise, their inner promise—then the date of God-realisation, God-revelation and God-manifestation on earth is not very far off.

Each individual can make a solemn promise to himself and to humanity at large. This is a promise of dedicated self-service. And when he fulfils his inner promise, God fulfils His highest Promise of absolute Perfection in and through the aspirant.