Part I

Hope human and faith divine

Human hope has no strength in it. It is only wishful thinking. But faith, divine faith, is the result or fruit of the inner message that we are getting constantly from within. When we have faith in ourselves or faith in God, immediately we get a message and that message has life in it. With human hope, a messenger brings a message but there is no life in it. Or the messenger may bring all kinds of destructive news, disheartening news. But when faith becomes the messenger, at that time we see life in the message. Faith, inner faith, is always fruitful, for it carries the message of light, and light is the life of the inner world. So the best thing is to remain in the domain of faith, to make yourself feel that you are nothing but constant faith in God. In that way you are bound to have divine hope. In faith, divine hope looms large. Divine hope is like a dream which comes at the end of the night, bearing the promise that soon the day will dawn. From dream, reality comes into existence. But when it is human hope, ninety-nine times out of a hundred the dream will not materialise, because there is no life in it.

When we have human hope, the thing we are hoping for may or may not materialise. But if it is divine hope, then we feel that somebody is telling us to sow the seed and promising us that tomorrow the seed will germinate, the day after tomorrow it will grow into a plant, and a few months or a few years later it will give us a bumper crop. When we have divine hope, there is a kind of inner feeling that something will come out of something, and we are inspired to work for the result. If we do this today, tomorrow we will get something, and the day after tomorrow something else will happen, it is like climbing up a ladder a few rungs at a time. We are going step by step. We are creating something and because of our creation we will get a certain result. If we are not satisfied, we will create more and more and then finally we will be really satisfied. This is divine hope.

Let us say that today I have the hope that tomorrow I will become a very sincere seeker. If it is human hope, it is just wishful thinking. When tomorrow dawns, I will be fast asleep, and I will hope that the following day I will be a very sincere seeker. But if it is divine hope, then immediately there will be action. I will do something. I will feel that just thinking or hoping that I will become something is not enough. I will enter into the field of activity. So, in this case, hope is the mother of merit. If we enter into activity, then we get the fulfilment of our hope or the transformation of our hope into reality.

Human hope is like human desire. When today’s hope is fulfilled, tomorrow there will be something else we are hoping for. There is no end to it. But when divine hope is fulfilled, we do not ask for something else, for a higher reality. Inside the hope itself, reality expands itself and becomes large, larger and largest.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Sri Chinmoy speaks, part 7, Agni Press, 1976
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/scs_7