Page 37 - All India Magazine Jun-2025

Purifying flame of will
It is truly like a great purifying flame of will, and it carries in
its core the thing that asks to be realised.
For instance, if you have done something you regret having
done, if that has unhappy consequences which disturb things,
and several people are implicated, you do not know the reac-
tions of the others, but you yourself wish that what has been
done may take a turn for the best, and that if there is a mis-
take, it may be understood, and that no matter what the mis-
take, this may be for you an opportunity for a greater progress,
a greater discipline, a new ascent towards the Divine, a door
open on a future that you want to be more clear and true and
intense; so all this is gathered here (pointing to the heart) like
a force, and then it surges up and rises in a great movement
of ascent, and at times without the shadow of a formulation,
without words, without expression, but like a springing flame.
That indeed is true aspiration. That may happen a hundred,
a thousand times daily if one is in that state in which one con-
stantly wants to progress and be more true and more fully in
harmony with what the Divine Will wants of us.
Prayer is a much more external thing, generally about a pre-
cise fact, and always formulated for it is the formula that makes
the prayer. One may have an aspiration and transcribe it as a
prayer, but aspiration goes beyond prayer in every way. It is
much closer and much more as it were self-forgetful, living only
in the thing one wants to be or do, and the offering of all that
one wants to do to the Divine. You may pray in order to ask for
something, you may also pray to thank the Divine for what He
has given you, and that prayer is much greater: it may be called
an act of thanksgiving. You may pray in gratitude for the aspect
of kindness the Divine has shown to you, for what He has done
for you, for what you see in Him, and the praise you want to
offer Him. And all this may take the form of a prayer. It is de-

All India Magazine, June 2025 37