Divine Will and Divine Grace

What is the will of the Divine, and how can we know it? The usual answer is some prescription from one religion or another with a doctrine supported by that religious persuasion as being the correct interpretation. In some cases, the Divine Will seems thereby to be in conflict from one religion to another, and we thus set up the battles that have led to more death and suffering in the world than virtually any other cause. The Crusades, the Holy Inquisition are a few examples of men interpreting the Divine Will to support their own ideology.

When we seek to know the Divine Will, we need to find a way to shift out of the limited, human, ego-based standpoint from which we normally start and find the thread that underlies the entire development of the universal manifestation and the evolution of consciousness that appears to be the secret sense of the development we see on earth. Divine Will is a broad conception that lays out the trajectory and objectives of the Divine Manifestation in the universe.

Divine Grace represents a supportive action to aid in the achievement of the Divine Will, by intervening at critical junctures. We cannot judge Divine Grace from the human standpoint as it fails to fit into our tidy little boxes defining how things are supposed to work. It is an expression of Divine Will at a detailed level.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “… when I speak of the Divine Will, I mean something different, — something that has descended here into an evolutionary world of Ignorance, standing at the back of things, pressing on the Darkness with its Light, leading things presently towards the best possible in the conditions of a world of Ignorance and leading it eventually towards a descent of a greater power of the Divine, which will be not an omnipotence held back and conditioned by the law of the world as it is, but in full action and therefore bringing the reign of light, peace, harmony, joy, love, beauty and Ananda, for these are the Divine Nature. The Divine Grace is there ready to act at every moment, but it manifests as one grows out of the Law of Ignorance into the Law of Light, and it is meant, not as an arbitrary caprice, however miraculous often its intervention, but as a help to that growth and a Light that leads and eventually delivers. If we take the facts of the world as they are and the facts of spiritual experience as a whole, neither of which can be denied or neglected, then I do not see what other Divine there can be. This Divine may lead us often through darkness, because the darkness is there in us and around us, but it is to the Light he is leading and not to anything else.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.7 Spiritual Forces of Help and Succour, pp. 170-171