If depression or anything else is hereditary it means that the material basis is faulty and hence does not support the working of Divine forces easily. However being difficult does not mean impossible. There is no difficulty that cannot eventually be dissolved by the Divine Grace supported by a faith that is persistent. It may take time, sometimes a long time but its effect is bound to be there. The key is perseverance and to endure the passage of time. But even when it may not be completely cured and some material support is needed by way of medication, my experience has been that an opening to the Grace, even when the faith is not complete and tainted with doubts from time to time does blunt the sting of the illness and protects the person from extreme steps which itself is not a small gain. In any case even for someone who does not believe in Grace to start with it is still a logical thing to pray and invoke Help from the Grace while continuing with whatever other means and methods one is using. For the Grace does not respond according to human logic but to something else.. It is enough that there is something within us, something of which the surface person may not be aware. Yet the Grace can and does act and supports one from behind. our blindness does not prevent it from acting. This has been the experience of all who have known the workings of the Grace and it is this to which we must hold on to and trust regardless of heredity and other things that may stand in the way of Her workings. Ultimately fate and destiny yield before the persistence of human will and even when there is no immediate success or even a seeming failure for this life, it has yet opened the doors for the future and created a groove through which the Divine Grace can act. For while our body and even outer personality is limited by a single lifetime neither the Grace nor our inner beings and the soul are thus limited. That is why it is always wise to try, to call Her Grace even in the face of certain failure and inevitable defeat. For in the end we shall find that it is not defeat and failure that are permanent and certain, – they are merely incidents in the long epic of the soul. Even death is simply a passage and not a final seal. What is permanent and indestructible is the soul’s will and faith and the Grace which grow and return again and again after any number of defeats until the crown of victory is acquired for the immortal soul of man.
Here are few lines from Savitri that reveal this profound truth for all of us:
Fate is Truth working out in Ignorance.
O King, thy fate is a transaction done
At every hour between Nature and thy soul
With God for its foreseeing arbiter.
Fate is a balance drawn in Destiny’s book.
Man can accept his fate, he can refuse.
Even if the One maintains the unseen decree
He writes thy refusal in thy credit page:
For doom is not a close, a mystic seal.
Arisen from the tragic crash of life,
Arisen from the body’s torture and death,
The spirit rises mightier by defeat;
Its godlike wings grow wider with each fall.
Its splendid failures sum to victory.
O man, the events that meet thee on thy road,
Though they smite thy body and soul with joy and grief,
Are not thy fate, — they touch thee awhile and pass;
Even death can cut not short thy spirit’s walk:
Thy goal, the road thou choosest are thy fate.
Affectionately,
Alok da
Reference:
Depression – Causes and Cure (TE 265) Dr Alok Pandey
YT Link: https://youtu.be/DafXghxDzwE
