Understanding the Respective Roles of Personal Effort and Divine Grace in the Transformation of Human Nature

0:01 It is one thing to adopt in one's own mind the idea that since the divine is doing the work, we need simply accept the idea and let things take their course. It is an entirely different thing if we actually want to accomplish the transformation needed to bring about a change in human nature based on evolutionary growth and development. There's a long debate about whether we have free will or whether everything is determined by fate or destiny, dependent origination or karmic consequence. The mind wants to have a simple solution that tends to be either yes or no, black or white.

0:46 Thus, the idea of having the divine do everything and the individual not having to make any personal effort, or the opposite idea that says that personal effort is the sole solution and there is no need or even a reality to Divine grace in action is an expression of the mind's limitations. There is certainly a role for personal effort, just as there is a deeper understanding of the working of the Divine Force or Divine grace. Sri Aurobindo in his book The Mother clarifies this point. Quote.

1:27 But so long as the lower nature is active, the personal effort of the Saudica remains necessary. The personal effort required is a triple labor of aspiration, rejection and surrender. Note that a Damasic surrender, refusing to fulfill the conditions and calling on God to do everything and save one all the trouble and struggle is a deception and does not lead to freedom and perfection. End Quote. In the same text he states quote reject the false notion that the divine power will do and is bound to do everything for you at your demand and even though you do not satisfy the conditions laid down by the Supreme, reject too the false and indolent expectation that the divine power will do even the surrender for you.

2:28 The Supreme demands your surrender to Her, but does not impose it. You are free at every moment till the irrevocable transformation comes, to deny and to reject the Divine or to recall yourself giving if you are willing to suffer the spiritual consequence. Your surrender must be self-made and free. It must be the surrender of a living being, not of an inert automaton or mechanical tool. An inert passivity is constantly confused with the real surrender. But out of an inert passivity nothing true and powerful can come. End Quote.

3:12 Sriorbindo further observes quote it. The idea that the Sadhna is done by the Divine rather than by oneself is a truth, but a truth that does not become effective for the consciousness until or in proportion as it is realized. The people who stagnate because of it are those who accept the idea but do not realize so. They have neither the force of Tapasia nor that of the Divine Grace. On the other hand, those who can realize it feel even behind their Tapasia and in it the action of the Divine Force.

3:55 End Quote. Reference. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Looking from Within, Chapter 5. Attitudes on the Path, page 125.