Moving forward is not a straight line growth. It is a spiral movement of Nature, once exceeding, then receding from its past achievements. To the outer eye busy at studying the surfaces of life, it may well appear as a futile effort with no real sense except the joy of the play or the hazard of some vague undefined experiment. This seems true when we see things only through small spaces of time and are too close to an event whose inner thread is lost to our eye and whose far-off end is not visible to us.
But to the trained eye, accustomed to see a Wisdom at work in the heart of creation, we can see in the upswings and downward gravitations, the heavings of an imprisoned Will that first prepares one part and then another until all is ready in us for the great consummation. Then suddenly, as if in some sovereign gesture or great leap, Nature assimilates everything and brings out the intended ‘New’ for which all these apparent failures are nothing else but preparatory steps and abortive stages.
Yet something is learnt through all these steps and stages, even when they seem to bring no apparent result and even appear to end in a failure. The essence of the experience, the joy of growth, even through tortuous roads and precipitous climbs, is never lost. Our souls return with renewed vigour, wedded to a stronger faith and more complete Wisdom. We recover what we seemed to have lost for a while but, along with this, also discover new aspects that are useful to the fullness of the whole. For in the last analysis, nothing is lost but only temporarily eclipsed and nothing is in vain except the ignorant vision of our mortal sight, too involved with the scene of the moment and too hasty at drawing conclusions and inferences based upon surface data.
Today we are experiencing such an evolutionary leap as never witnessed before. But the surface appearances betray what is being prepared beneath the surface. We note only the chaos and confusion that our senses and physical mind register, crowding one apparent fact over another. What we lose in the process is the central thread that holds these various scenes and acts of the Spirit’s play in the fields of Nature. Let us then at least learn to wait patiently if not yet with Wisdom until the last Act of the Drama of this Age unfolds itself. As the Upaniṣad says:
It is the dhīra, the steadfast, patient and long-persevering, the one undaunted by appearances, who awakens and sees the Light of the Soul and all things in the Light of that Wisdom. Then our hearts will find lasting peace and abiding happiness.
