What is God's plan?1

This question is often raised and discussed. Strangely enough, the very idea of God's plan attracts the attention, not only of those who believe in God, but also of those who deny God.

Has God a plan? No, never. To have a plan means drawing up an estimate of the work to be done in the future. It is the temptation of the results that often inspires us to throw ourselves into activities. We want to grow into the success of the future. Hence, plans do help us to some extent. But God needs no plan. To Him, the vision of the Future is not a thing to be fulfilled, but a thing that already abides, nay, looms large in the giant breast of the present.

The world has ever been charmed by movement, here, there and everywhere. The waning of enthusiastic movement is the downfall of human life. Each movement has to undergo ups and downs before it reaches its goal. Movement is the outer expression of an inner urge. This inner urge is the representative of God's Will in a human body to play with the Beyond, to awaken the Infinite in the finite.

God has no plan. Neither does He need one. He is not a mental being who cannot think of the future without a plan. What God is … is Delight. What God wants us to have … is Delight. We can have it only by turning all that we have and all that we are towards the Supreme Reality.

You must think of God's existence first, and then, if you must, you may think of God's plan. Does God exist? Where is the proof? Your very heart is the proof. Constantly your heart demands or begs of you to see God everywhere and in everything. With the aspiration of your heart, God's existence can be felt. With the aspiration of your heart you can see that God's Heaven, which is Silence, and God's earth, which is Power, are not only interdependent, but also complementary smiles of God's eternal Reality.

Some people say that the world has come into existence from a plan made by God. They feel that the world is full of suffering and imperfection; further, that had they been given a chance, they could have changed the face of the world. To them, I say, "Who prevents you? It is you who have to cultivate the soil in order to grow a bumper crop of perfection and satisfaction."

Much have we learned from suffering and imperfection. What we need is Delight and Perfection. We cannot have these two divine qualities by finding fault with a plan that we have thrust upon God. We can have Delight and Perfection only by living in God's Consciousness. There is no other way.

Man's interpretation of suffering and imperfection is based on his preconceived mental ideas and notions. God's interpretation is founded on the direct Vision in its absolute and ultimate Reality. Man's interpretation needs justification. But God's interpretation does not need any justification, for He is at once the Truth embodied and the Truth revealed.

Similarly, a spiritual man looks at God from a different angle than does an ordinary man. He sees and feels that God has and is everything, manifest and unmanifest. His God is in the eternal process of ever-progressing perfection. An ordinary man, however, sees and feels that God or Truth has yet to achieve something to transform the world.

God is a child, an eternal divine Child. How can a child have a plan? Impossible. Just as a human child plays with his dolls, dressing, stroking, fondling them, so God, the divine Child, does the same with His dolls, the human instruments. But God, being the Divine child, whatever He does, He does consciously, significantly and divinely.

Man's unconscious, semi-conscious, conscious and spiritually conscious plans and God's self-revealing manifestations are inseparable. The Supreme Secret is that man's plans are always united with the breath of the Supreme. Man has to know this. Nothing further is there to know. Man must feel this. Nothing deeper is there to feel. Man has to realise this. Nothing higher is there to realise.


This talk was given on 20 August 1966 at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Virgil Gant, 467 Central Park West, New York City.

Sri Chinmoy, AUM — Vol. 2, No.10,11, May — 27 June 1967, Boro Park Printers -- Brooklyn, N. Y, 1967