Social Gatheka Number 33

Will is the development of the wish. When one says that it was Divine Will, it means it was a command, a wish developed into action. When the wish becomes action, it becomes will – it becomes a command. One might think it is only his wish, but it is a wish as long as it is still; it is there, it has not sprung up; it is inactive, just like a seed in the ground; it is a wish. But the moment the seed from the ground is coming out as a seedling, and it is in the process of becoming a plant, then it is a will. Therefore, these two different names are the names of the same thing. The same thing in its undeveloped state, and the same thing in its process of development.

And now, I would like to explain what I mean by desire. It is a weaker, or primitive state of the wish. When an idea, a thought is not yet made clear in one's own mind, that one's own mind has not taken a decision, that, 'it must be so,' that, 'I would like it to be so,' then it is a desire – it is a fancy. It comes and it goes, and a person does not care. But when that desire is a little more developed, then it is a wish. Then it stays there; then it does not go away like the clouds. It is tangible, it is there, and yet it is not fulfilled, because for the fulfillment it must develop.

Now there are some in this world, who say, 'All my life I had bad luck. The bad luck was this: never in my life was my wish granted.' They can also very easily imagine that there was a spirit against them, or God was against them, or the Stars were against them, or something which was keeping back their wish. But it is not always so! In the first place, God wishes the same which we wish. If God wished differently from our wish we could not worship that God, who always was against us. It is not so! Besides, there is no benefit in opposing the wish of man, there is no advantage in doing so, to God.

No doubt, there are planetary reasons; there are reasons of the universe working; there are reasons of the cosmos that oppose the wish. As they say in English, 'man proposes, God disposes.' God is put in the place of Cosmos forces. But God, with His mercy and compassion, never has a desire to oppose anyone's wish. God apart; a good-hearted man would never like to oppose anybody's wish; he would do anything possible to make anybody's wish complete – to make a person's wish come true. But what mostly happens is that man proves to be the worst enemy of his own desire, for many reasons.

There is one reason: that he is never sure what he desires. Out of a hundred persons you will find one who know what he desires. But ninety-nine say, 'Do I desire or do I not desire? I do not know. I think I desire, but I do not know if I desire.' Ninety-nine percent among mankind is in this condition. They really do not know if they desire. One day they say, 'yes, I do,' another day they say, 'no, I do not think I desire.' Therefore, the desire is decomposed in the unclearness of mind.

Then, there are others who analyze their desire and they analyze it till they have broken it to pieces. There are many analytical people who have all through their life destroyed their desires by analyzing.

And there is a third kind of people who have adopted a kind of passive attitude. They say it is a sin to desire, and yet, they cannot be without a desire. And in this passive attitude they say, 'well, I will not desire;' they have crossed the desire that was there.

And there is a fourth kind of people, who desire something, but by the lack of concentration they cannot turn their desire into a wish, and therefore, desire stays in its primitive stage all the time.

And there is a fifth kind of person who develop desire into a wish, but he goes so far and no further. But the wish must be developed into the will. So the desire is not put through so to speak, and there never comes a culmination to the desire.

Now this is a subject which is of the greatest importance in the life of every person in the world. No person in the world can exist in the world without wishing for something. And if there is a person who has no wish, he need not stay in the world. He must go out in the mountains, somewhere outside the world; he must not be in the crowd, he cannot exist there; and even there he should turn into a tree or into a rock, in order to exist, because to be a living being without a wish is not possible.

The difference between persons high and low is; according to the wish they have. One wishes for the earth, the other wishes for the heaven. The desire of the one takes one to the height of spiritual progress, and the desire of the other takes him to the depth of the earth. Man is great or small; man is wise or foolish; man is on the right road or on the wrong road, according to the desire he has.

And now, in coming to the question of the opposing forces – there is according to the Sufi, Qaza and Qadr. Qaza is a universal will – universal power; Qadr is the individual will, and the individual power. No doubt, the individual power, in comparison to the universal power, is like a drop compared to the sea. In cannot stand against the sweeping waves of the sea that come and destroy it. Nevertheless, the drop, being of the same source as the sea, it has also a certain amount of strength and individual will to hold it against opposing forces. But if we come to make it more clear – the individual will and the universal will – it is in small things that we can make it clear.

A person who is walking in the street, and says, 'I feel hungry, I should like to go in a restaurant, and have a meal.' Now that is, 'individual will.' And a person goes in the street and sees a poor man, and he says, 'Ah, this man, he seems to be poor. He must have something. Can I not do something for him? I want to see him happier looking.' As soon as he thinks for the good of another person, at once his will becomes the universal will. The reason is that the boundary that limits the will of an individual is the thought of self. As soon as one has forgotten the thought of self, as soon as one thinks of another, that boundary breaks and the will becomes stronger.

Those Masters of humanity, those who have been able to do great things in the world, where did they get their will? It was their own will which was extended by the breaking of the boundaries of the 'thought of self.' I do not mean that one must give up the thought of self, that one must never think of oneself, never think of one's lunch and dinner. The self is there, one has to think about it. But at the same time, in order to expand, in order to let the will grow, the more one forgets oneself, the more one is helped.

There are some who take the path of resignation, neither doing good for themselves nor doing good for another. They say it is a kind of attitude they take – 'it will come from somewhere, or somebody will do it.' If I am hungry someone will come and feed me; or if another person is in need, somebody will come and help him. Their wish is inactive, they do not let their wish become a will; they remain there – they are passive. No doubt, an intelligent passiveness and resignation, also, can bring about a wonderful result. But many of them do it intellectually.

The quality of the saints is to be resigned to all that comes; but then, they do not even make a wish. They take all that comes, flowers and thorns, everything that comes, they take it. They look into thorns, and see that they are flowers. With praise and with blame they are contented. They are contented with the rise and fall; they take all that comes; they take life as it is. That is the intelligent way of doing it. The unintelligent way of doing it is: that anything that is difficult one says, 'somebody will come and do it.' It is laziness – it is a kind of laziness. They might think that it is passiveness, but it is laziness, when one has to do something, if one thinks somebody will come and do it.

As in India there is a saying that a man was lying under the cherry tree, and some ripe cherries were falling near him, but he was lying. There was a man who came from a distance, and he called out, 'Please come here. Will you please put this cherry in my mouth?' There are many to be found like this. It comes only by a feeling of helplessness – laziness. They give in; they have no enthusiasm; they have no courage! In that way the will power is broken down, and in the end they are helpless. There is no comparison with the saintly spirit and the spirit of helplessness. Although both become resigned, the one is not resigned; he would like the cherry in his mouth, but the other must give it to him. The saint does not care if he eats it, or if he does not eat it; it is just the same to him. In that case it is allowable.

Then, there are others who are overanxious for their wish to come true. It destroys their wish because of the greater strength, the pressure, they put upon their wish. It is just like guarding a plant against the sun and the water, the very thing which should help it grow; if one guards against it then the plant cannot grow. The same thing is true with the wish. If one says, 'This is my wish and must come true. No one must think about it. No one must look at it.' He is always afraid, perhaps, this will not come true. That person is eager. Then he is thinking with doubt, and fear, and suspicion. Therefore, he will destroy his own wish.

And again, there is a person who is willing to sacrifice anything or to persevere as much as it requires for even a small wish, which he does not value very much – when it comes to value. And yet he gives every thought and he does everything in his power to make that wish come true. That person is taking the same path as the path of the Master. He must have a success, and it is success which brings success. If once a person is successful, the success attracts success. Once a person fails, then the failure attracts failure. For the same reason, that if one is on the path of accomplishment, each accomplishment gives him greater power to go forward; as when a person is on the path going downwards, then every step leads him downwards.

And now, the question: which desire and wish one must give up and which one must rear. One must have discrimination. If there is no discrimination, then one will take a wrong way. It may be a success, but success will be in a wrong way. If one reared every desire and wish, and thought – this must be accomplished, then sometimes it may be right and sometimes not right. The discrimination must first be developed in order to understand what leads one to happiness – a lasting happiness, a greater peace, a higher attainment. But once a person has a discrimination and one has chosen a wish, then do not analyze it too much.

Many have formed a habit of analyzing, everything, everyday. If a person holds a wish for ten years, if every day in his mind he analyzes, he is against it; he looks at it from a new point of view; he tries to find the wrong point of his own wish and tries to crush it in every way possible. In ten years time his wish should come true but it is broken into pieces. There are many intellectual people, many people with doubt, many analytical persons, who are the greatest enemies of their wish.

Now there comes a question, 'If a person expressed his wish in prayer, is it wrong?' Because many say that God knows everything, why must you tell God that such and such thing should be done? God knows the secret of every heart. Besides, is it not selfish, many ask, to bring our wish before God? If it was a good wish it must come true by itself.' The answer is that prayer is a reminder to God. Prayer is a song sung before God; who enjoys it; who hears it; who is reminded about something. But one thinks, 'how can our prayer, our little voice, reach God?' It reaches God through our ears – God is within us. If our soul can hear our voice, God can hear it too.

The prayer is the best way because the wish is beautifully put, which harmonizes one with God, which brings about a greater relationship between man and God. And then one asks, 'is it good to think about the wish one has?' I say one can never think too many times about the wish one has. Dream about, and think about it, and imagine, and keep it in mind, and retain it in mind, and do everything possible towards its fulfillment; but with poise, with tranquility, with patience, with confidence, with ease, and not by thinking hard. The one who thinks hard about his wish destroys it, because it is just like over-heating or too much water to a plant.

The very thing which will help it, destroys it. If a person worries about his wish, he certainly has no patience, or has some fear or some doubt; all these things destroy wish. Wish must be cherished easily, with comfort, with hope, with confidence, and with patience. Doubt is like rust to the wish, it eats it; and fear is still worse, it destroys it. And when a person has no discrimination, and one is not sure whether it is a right wish or wrong, whether it should come or not, one day: 'I should so much like it to come,' another day he says, 'I do not care if it comes;' after a week he says: 'I wish it so much to come;' and after a month he says: 'oh, I do not care now.' It is just like making a fire and then putting it out; and make a fire and again put it out and extinguish it. Therefore, every time he extinguishes the fire, it is gone; he will have to make it anew. And if for ten years he has cherished it – made that wish; each time it is broken, he has to make it anew.

And now, coming to the question, 'what wish is the most desirable to make? It depends upon one's own stage of evolution. A person who is only so much evolved that he can make no greater wish than the need of his daily life, he should do it. He must not think that because it is the need of daily life that it is nothing; I must wish for something higher. He must not think that, if he thinks that his heart is inclined to the need of daily life, he must not think of it first. But if his heart thinks, 'No, I cannot think about it. I can think of something much higher, than this,' then he must take the consequences of it.

The consequence will be that he will have to undergo a test and a trial; and if he does not mind, so much the better. There are many things in this world, which we want and which we need, and yet we do not necessarily think about them. If they come it is alright; and if they do not come, we feel for the time uncomfortable, but that feeling goes away. We cannot put our mind and thought upon them, if we are evolved. Because if we are evolved we think of something else; we think of something higher; our thought is evolved in something much higher, greater than what we need in everyday life – that slips from our grasp.

And it is therefore, that great poets, thinkers, and saints, were very often hard up of the things that one could get in everyday life. With all the power that they could command gold to come to their house and all the gold would come to their house – they have only to command. If they command that the army come into my power, it would come; anything they would command, it would come with their command. Yet they cannot put their mind to it, they can only wish something which is equal to their particular evolution. So each person can wish for something equal to his evolution, he cannot wish properly something which is beneath his evolution, even if he was told.

Very often, in order to help a person in his present situation, I have told the person, 'now think of this particular object,' but the person, being much more evolved, has thought with his brain, he heart was somewhere else, and so it never comes true. One can give one's heart and mind, and whole being to something which is equal to one's evolution. If not equal, one cannot give one's whole being to it, maybe he gives his thought to it. What is thought? Thought without feeling has no power. If there is not the soul and spirit at the back of it, there is no power. So this must be understood, that our wish must be different from what we need in everyday life. Never mix it! Always think that what we need in everyday life is one thing, it is something practical, if it be our wish, then it is alright. And then cherish, to maintain our wish as something sacred, something given to us by God to cherish, to bring it to fulfillment. That it is in the fulfillment of one's highest and best and deepest wish that there lies the purpose of life.