Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/260

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bad is denied ; but the distinction is obviated by the elimination of bad. No doubt, there is the old, puzzling question of the will. "Our wills are ours to make them Thine," declares the great poet. Yet that is only the language of the well-ordered moral life, not of the well-beloved devout life—of reverential submission, not of entranced embrace—of Mary caressing the feet, not of Meerabai lost in the love-light; of the Lord. "What have I to do with owning a will and training it?" says the bhakta "Who am I that I should 'donate ' a will to the Lord? There is no will save 'His Will'. 'I will—that is the prerogative of Him alone who could avow, 'I am'. The rest is all the leela—the divine delight—of the Lord." It may be true that a man without a will is a 'machine'. But it may also be true that the devotion which recognises, provides a place for, no will but "His Will," flowers into a 'messiah.'

Thus the end of sadhana is God. The motive of sadhana is truth. The range of sadhana is the whole universe. The method of sa-