Forthgoing and Returning
It will help you, in doing this and in changing your desire, if you
realise that the great evolution of humanity goes on along two
paths--the Path of Forthgoing, and the Path of Return.
On the Path, or marga, of Pravritti--forthgoing on which are the
vast majority of human beings, desires are necessary and useful. On
that path, the more desire a man has, the better for his evolution.
They are the motives that prompt to activity. Without these the
stagnates, he is inert. Why should Isvara have filled the worlds with
desirable objects if He did not intend that desire should be an
ingredient in evolution? He deals with humanity as a sensible mother
deals -with her child. She does not give lectures to the child on the
advantages of walking nor explain to it learnedly the mechanism of the
muscles of the leg. She holds a bright glittering toy before the
child, and says: "Come and get it." Desire awakens, and the child
begins to crawl, and so it learns to walk. So Isvara has put toys
around us, but always just out of our reach, and He says: "Come,
children, take these. Here are love, money, fame, social
consideration; come and get them. Walk, make efforts for them." And
we, like children, make great efforts and struggle along to snatch
these toys. When we seize the toy, it breaks into pieces and is of no
use. People fight and struggle and toil for wealth, and, when they
become multi-millionaires, they ask: "How shall we spend this wealth?"
I read of a millionaire in America, who was walking on foot from city
to city, in order to distribute the vast wealth which he accumulated.
He learned his lesson. Never in another life will that man be induced
to put forth efforts for the toy of wealth. Love of fame, love of
power, stimulate men to most strenuous effort. But when they are
grasped and held in the hand, weariness is the result. The mighty
statesman, the leader of the nation, the man idolised by
millions--follow him home, and there you will see the weariness of
power, the satiety that cloys passion. Does then God mock us with all
the objects? No. The object has been to bring out the power of the
Self to develop the capacity latent in man, and in the development of
human faculty, the result of the great lila may be seen. That is the
way in which we learn to unfold the God within us; that is the result
of the play of the divine Father with His children.
But sometimes the desire for objects is lost too early, and the
lesson is but half learned. That is one of the difficulties in the
India of today. You have a mighty spiritual philosophy, which was the
natural expression for the souls who were born centuries ago. They
were ready to throw away the fruit of action and to work for the
Supreme to carry out His Will.
But the lesson for India at the present time is to wake up the
desire. It may look like going back, but it is really a going forward.
The philosophy is true, but it belonged to those older souls who were
ready for it, and the younger souls now being born into the people are
not ready for that philosophy. They repeat it by rote, they are
hypnotised by it, and they sink down into inertia, because there is
nothing they desire enough to force them to exertion. The consequence
is that the nation as a whole is going downhill. The old lesson of
putting different objects before souls of different ages, is
forgotten, and every one is now nominally aiming at ideal perfection,
which can only be reached when the preliminary steps have been
successfully mounted. It is the same as with the "Sermon on the Mount"
in Christian countries, but there the practical common sense of the
people bows to it and--ignores it. No nation tries to live by the
"Sermon on the Mount " It is not meant for ordinary men and women, but
for the saint. For all those who are on the Path of Forthgoing, desire
is necessary for progress.
What is the Path of Nivritti? It is the Path of Return. There
desire must cease; and the Self-determined will must take its place.
The last object of desire in a person commencing the Path of Return is
the desire to work with the Will of the Supreme; he harmonises his
will with the Supreme Will, renounces all separate desires, and thus
works to turn the wheel of life as long as such turning is needed by
the law of Life. Desire on the Path of Forthgoing becomes will on the
Path of Return; the soul, in harmony with the Divine, works with the
law. Thought on the Path of Forthgoing is ever alert, flighty and
changing; it becomes reason on the Path of Return; the yoke of reason
is placed on the neck of the lower mind, and reason guides the bull.
Work, activity, on the Path of Forthgoing, is restless action by which
the ordinary man is bound; on the Path of Return work becomes
sacrifice, and thus its binding force is broken. These are, then, the
manifestations of three aspects, as shown on the Paths of Forthgoing
and Return.
Bliss manifested as desire is changed into will Wisdom manifested
as thought is changed into reason. Activity manifested as work is
changed into sacrifice.
People very often ask with regard to this: "Why is will placed in
the human being as the correspondence of bliss in the Divine?" The
three great Divine qualities are: chit or consciousness; ananda or
bliss; sat or existence. Now it is quite clear that the consciousness
is reflected in intelligence in man--the same quality, only in
miniature. It is equally clear that existence and activity belong to
each other. You can only exist as you act outwards. The very form of
the word shows It --"ex, out of"; it is manifested life. That leaves
the third, bliss, to correspond with will, and some people are rather
puzzled with that, and they ask: "What is the correspondence between
bliss and will?" But if you come down to desire, and the objects of
desire, you will be able to solve the riddle. The nature of the Self
is bliss. Throw that nature down into matter and what will be the
expression of the bliss nature? Desire for happiness, the seeking
after desirable objects, which it imagines will give it the happiness
which is of its own essential nature, and which it is continually
seeking to realise amid the obstacles of the world. Its nature being
bliss, it seeks for happiness and that desire for happiness is to be
transmuted into will. All these correspondences have a profound
meaning if you will only look into them, and that universal
"will-to-live" translates itself as the "desire for happiness" that
you find in every man and woman, in every sentient creature. Has it
ever struck you how surely you are justifying that analysis of your
own nature by the way you accept happiness as your right, and resent
misery, and ask what you have done to deserve it? You do not ask the
same about happiness, which is the natural result of your own nature.
The thing that has to be explained is not happiness but pain, the
things that are against the nature of the Self that is bliss. And so,
looking into this, we see how desire and will are both the
determination to be happy. But the one is ignorant, drawn out by outer
objects; the other is self-conscious, initiated and ruled from within.
Desire is evoked and directed from outside; and when the same aspect
rules from within, it is will. There is no difference in their nature.
Hence desire on the Path of Forthgoing becomes will on the Path of
Return.
When desire, thought and work are changed into will, reason and
sacrifice, then the man is turning homewards, then he lives by
renunciation.
When a man has really renounced, a strange change takes place. On
the Path of Forthgoing, you must fight for everything you want to get;
on the Path of Return, nature pours her treasures at your feet. When a
man has ceased to desire them, then all treasures pour down upon him,
for he has become a channel through which all good gifts flow to those
around him. Seek the good, give up grasping, and then everything will
be yours. Cease to ask that your own little water tank may be filled,
and you will become a pipe, joined to the living source of all waters,
the source which never runs dry, the waters which spring up
unfailingly. Renunciation means the power of unceasing work for the
good of all, work which cannot fail, because wrought by the Supreme
Worker through His servant.
If you are engaged in any true work of charity, and your means are
limited and the wealth does not flow into your hands, what does it
mean? It means that you have not yet learnt the true renunciation. You
are clinging to the visible, to the fruit of action, and so the wealth
does not pour through your hands.
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