The way reached by action (cont.)

This text continues the theme begun in this post.

Now coming to action. There are certain actions, such as eating, drinking, sitting and walking, which are not different from those of the animals. Therefore if man in his actions does not show something which is not found in animals, then he has not awakened to human nature; he cannot show something of the characteristics of a human being. One might ask, what are these?

By seeing good in everyone and everything, he begins to develop the Divine Light.

The very same actions such as eating, drinking, sitting and sleeping, have at the back of them a light to guide, because the instant a man thinks he must not push another back when he is walking, and says, “I am sorry,” he shows a tendency to be different from the animals, for they must rub against one another, and man shows he will not do so. Animals will pass before one another and instead of bowing to one another, show their horns, and their greeting will be a howl. Man will be different. What is the special characteristic of man but consideration, refinement, patience, thoughtfulness? And once he has practised these, it leads to another action; that leads to the practice of self sacrifice which leads to Divine Action. When man sacrifices his time, his advantage in life for the sake of another whom he loves, he respects, he adores, this sacrifice raises him higher than any standard of ordinary beings, for it is of the Divine nature, which is not human. Because the human being begins to think as God thinks and because his actions become more and more divine and become the actions of God, that person is greater than the person who merely believes in God, for his own actions have become the actions of God.

The one whose soul is awakened, he sees all the doings of grown-up people as the doings of children of one Father. He looks upon them as the Father would look upon all human beings on the earth, without thinking that they are Germans or Englishmen or Frenchmen. They are equally dear to him. He looks at all full of forgiveness; not only toward those awakened souls who deserve it, but also toward the others, who do not deserve it. He understands, for he understands the reason behind all.

By seeing good in everyone and everything, he begins to develop the Divine Light, which expands itself, throwing itself upon the greater part of life, making the whole life as a scene of the Divine Sublimity. What the mystic develops in life is a wider outlook, and this wider outlook changes his action. He develops in himself a point of view which may be called a Divine Point of View. You cannot help calling this the Divine point of view when a person rises to the state in which all that is done to him, he feels that it is from God; and when he feels that when he does right or wrong, he feels that he does right or wrong to God. Once arrived at this, this is true religion. There can be no better religion than that, the religion of God on earth.

This is the point of view which makes a person as God, divine. He is resigned when badly treated. But he will take himself to task if he happens to find a shortcoming in his own action, for that is the action toward God. Then the conception of the mystic of the Deity is not only of a King or Judge or a Creator; the mystical conception of God is the Beloved, the only Beloved there is. To him all the love of this world is like little girls playing with their dolls, loving them. In that way they learn the lesson they have to realize later in their life of taking care of the home.

The mystic learns the same lesson by proving sincere and devoted to all sorts of creatures, and he must devote and make himself devoted, to waken himself to the Beloved, the only Beloved there is, and to Whom all love is due.