The answer to world-despair17

Before we offer the answer to world-despair, let us first try to know why there is world-despair. For if we do so, we shall be able to offer the most adequate answer to world-despair. Why is there world-despair? World-despair exists because the world desperately needs the life-illumining Light. Why is there world-despair? World-despair exists because the world constantly needs the life-energising Love. Why is there world-despair? World-despair exists because the world immediately needs the life-immortalising Delight.

The answer to world-despair is Light. The answer to world-despair is Love. The answer to world-despair is Delight. We need Light to see the Creator within and the creation without. We need Love to feel the Beloved within and the Lover without. We need Delight to sail God’s Boat within and to reach God’s Shore without.

World-despair is at once bad and good, undivine and divine. It is bad and undivine because it lives in the darkness-palace of the ignorance-kingdom. It is good and divine because it cries for Light, more Light, abundant Light and infinite Light; Love, more Love, abundant Love and infinite Love; Delight, more Delight, abundant Delight and infinite Delight.

World-despair exists because there is a yawning gulf between our self-giving and the world’s receptivity, between the world’s self-giving and our receptivity. World-despair exists because there is a yawning gulf between our life-perfection and God’s Manifestation, between God’s Life-Perfection and our manifestation.

Grace from above can be the only link between our self-giving and the world-receptivity and between the world’s self-giving and our receptivity. Aspiration from below can be the only link between our life-perfection and God’s Manifestation and between God’s Life-Perfection and our manifestation.

The absolute Grace of the Supreme has given birth to the transcendental Reality and the universal Reality. Man’s constant inner cry reaches the transcendental Reality, which is the acme of Perfection in the world of the Beyond, and at the same time this inner cry manifests the universal Reality in the core of each aspiring individual on earth.

In the world of yesterday, ignorance guided and moulded us. In the world of today, despair lords it over us. In the world of tomorrow, glowing hope will guide and lead us. And in the world of the day after tomorrow, we shall grow into God’s Promise, the Promise of achievement immortal and infinite.

Talking, lecturing and advising the world can never be an adequate answer to world-despair. The most effective answer to world-despair lies in self-giving. But we learn the art of self-giving only after we have learned the art of self-finding. And we learn the art of self-finding only after we have learned the art of meditating, the art of meditating on the Inner Pilot, the Supreme. What we call meditation is nothing other than God-manifestation. And God-manifestation, both within us and without, is always a perfect stranger to human despair.

This short talk of mine can give us only one per cent capacity to offer the answer to world-despair. But the meditation which we are going to do right now is bound to give us ninety-nine per cent capacity to offer the answer to world-despair. Now I wish all of us to meditate only for Light, Love and Delight. Light will open up our eye that sees. Love will open up our heart that feels. Delight will carry us to our Source, the Supreme.


THN 17. Dag Hammarskjold Lecture Series, Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium, 11 October 1973.