Matching the Grace? Human effort, however great, even the greatest tapasya by the greatest of seers and sages is nothing compared to the immensity of the Divine Grace and its working. The Divine Grace is not a vibration or a frequency but a living conscious Divine Power. It acts when it choses to act and its action is not based upon human notions and logic of cause and effort but on something else that it sees, the soul behind the appearances.
All these are old traditional ideas of seeking response from the Grace through mechanical means, of getting favours through worship and faith etc. Here is a letter of Sri Aurobindo on the workings of the Grace.
‘I should like to say something about the Divine Grace—for you seem to think it should be something like a Divine Reason acting upon lines not very different from those of human intelligence. But it is not that. Also it is not a universal Divine Compassion either, acting impartially on all who approach it and acceding to all prayers. It does not select the righteous and reject the sinner. The Divine Grace came to aid the persecutor (Saul of Tarsus), it came to St. Augustine the profligate, to Jagai and Madhai of infamous fame, to Bilwamangal and many others whose conversion might well scandalise the puritanism of the human moral intelligence; but it can come to the righteous also—curing them of their self-righteousness and leading to a purer consciousness beyond these things. It is a power that is superior to any rule, even to the Cosmic Law—for all spiritual seers have distinguished between the Law and Grace. Yet it is not indiscriminate—only it has a discrimination of its own which sees things and persons and the right times and seasons with another vision than that of the Mind or any other normal Power. A state of Grace is prepared in the individual often behind thick veils by means not calculable by the mind and when the state of Grace comes then the Grace itself acts. There are these three powers: (1) the Cosmic Law, of Karma or what else; (2) the Divine Compassion acting on as many as it can reach through the nets of the Law and giving them their chance; and (3) the Divine Grace which acts more incalculably but also more irresistibly than the others. The only question is whether there is something behind all the anomalies of life which can respond to the call and open itself with whatever difficulty till it is ready for the illumination of the Divine Grace—and that something must be not a mental and vital movement but an inner somewhat which can well be seen by the inner eye. If it is there and when it becomes active in front, then the Compassion can act, though the full action of the Grace may still wait attending the decisive decision or change; for this may be postponed to a future hour, because some portion or element of the being may still come between, something that is not yet ready to receive.’
So you see all these elaborate methods trying to reduce or explain the Grace in terms of scientific equations, though appealing to the modern mind at one level is largely the ego trying to lay claim on the Grace. But the Grace works best when the ego interferes least including the ego of the sadhaka or the devotee.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
