The action of Grace manifests itself mainly in two main ways as far as its results are concerned.
First is to bring peace and solace amidst the wounds and disturbances of life, or an unexpected Intervention responding to an urgent distress call, protecting and saving from imminent catastrophe. These are the most recognised interventions of the Grace, and what men call as miracles. If the catastrophe still takes place for whatever reasons, then the Grace works to minimise the damage and bring back the needed Peace and inner healing to the suffering. Here, the hand of Grace supports us through an inevitable process of suffering, which for some reason one has to pass.
This peace is independent of circumstances, though the action often does change the outer circumstances as well, putting us in conditions more favourable to the realisation of our true destiny. Of course, many do not understand this change and often fall back into the old comfort zones, which they themselves so much complained about.
The second action is to increase in us the aspiration and will for progress, to help us surmount difficulties that we thought were impossible to conquer, to open doors to the higher Consciousness, to release and develop in us the godlike elements, to orient the nature towards the needed change, and finally change our human nature into a reflection of the Divine Nature.
This is the main purpose and action of the Divine Grace. And it can use anything and everything to propel towards our Divine destiny, once the soul touched by the Grace. To those who completely surrender with complete faith and confidence to the Grace, demanding nothing, with the only thought of giving oneself completely to the Divine, for them the Grace takes care of everything, their inner as well as outer needs, shaping their destiny in beautiful ways, annuling the laws of karma and protecting them against all dangers including the greatest of all dangers, from our own ego and desires.
Here are two letters of Sri Aurobindo on this subject.
‘It is not indispensable that the Grace should work in a way that the human mind can understand, it generally doesn’t: it works in its own “mysterious” way. At first usually it works behind the veil, preparing things, not manifesting. Afterwards it may manifest, but the sadhak does not understand very well what is happening. Finally, when he is capable of it, he both feels and understands or at least begins to do so. Some feel and understand from the first or very early; but that is not the ordinary case.
“The ordinary action of the Divine is a constant intervention within the actual law of things”—that may or may not be but is not usually called the Divine Grace. The Divine Grace is something not calculable, not bound by anything the intellect can fix as a condition—though ordinarily some call, aspiration, intensity of the psychic being can awaken it, yet it acts sometimes without any apparent cause even of that kind.’
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-grace-and-guidance#p8)
‘There is nothing unintelligible in what I say about strength and Grace. Strength has a value for spiritual realisation, but to say that it can be done by strength only and by no other means is a violent exaggeration. Grace is not an invention, it is a fact of spiritual experience. Many who would be considered as mere nothings by the wise and strong have attained by Grace; illiterate, without mental power or training, without “strength” of character or will, they have yet aspired and suddenly or rapidly grown into spiritual realisation, because they had faith or because they were sincere. I do not see why these facts which are facts of spiritual history and of quite ordinary spiritual experience should be discussed and denied and argued as if they were mere matters of speculation. Strength, if it is spiritual, is a power for spiritual realisation; a greater power is sincerity; the greatest power of all is Grace. I have said times without number that if a man is sincere, he will go through in spite of long delay and overwhelming difficulties. I have repeatedly spoken of the Divine Grace. I have referred any number of times to the line of the Gita:
Ahaṁ tvā sarvapāpebhyo mokṣayiṣyāmi mā śucaḥ
“I will deliver thee from all sin and evil, do not grieve.”‘
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-grace-and-guidance#p14)
Affectionately,
Alok Da
