Changes

One is either conscious of the power or peace or other force (light, ananda, knowledge, movements of the divine working) or, if not conscious of that, is aware of the results—either of these things is sufficient to show that one is open. To feel the grace descending and yet doubt whether it is not a vital imagination is a folly of the physical mind; a spiritual experience must be accepted as it is; if one questions at every moment whether an experience is an experience or Grace is grace or peace is peace or light is light, one will spend all the time in these useless and fantastic doubts instead of making a quiet and natural progress. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/the-physical-mind-and-sadhana#p26</ref>

If behind your devotion and surrender you make a cover for your desires, egoistic demands and vital insistences, if you put these things in place of the true aspiration or mix them with it and try to impose them on the Divine Shakti, then it is idle to invoke the divine Grace to transform you. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/the-mother-i#p6</ref>

I have seen too that very often a long tapasya with doubtful results prepares the moment of grace and the spontaneous downflow. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-grace-and-guidance#p17</ref>

For the Grace to help you, you must fulfil the conditions, and the very first condition is to reject all doubt, however slight. I repeat again: you would do well to read once more, carefully and attentively, the first two chapters of ''The Mother''. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/16-july-1936#p2</ref>

If part of the being surrenders, but another part reserves itself, follows its own way or makes its own conditions, then each time that that happens, you are yourself pushing the divine Grace away from you. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/the-mother-i#p5</ref>

If each time the Power intervenes and brings in the Truth, you turn your back on it and call in again the falsehood that has been expelled, it is not the divine Grace that you must blame for failing you, but the falsity of your own will and the imperfection of your own surrender. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/the-mother-i#p8</ref>

If you call for the Truth and yet something in you chooses what is false, ignorant and undivine or even simply is unwilling to reject it altogether, then always you will be open to attack and the Grace will recede from you. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/the-mother-i#p9</ref>

If you open yourself on one side or in one part to the Truth and on another side are constantly opening the gates to hostile forces, it is vain to expect that the divine Grace will abide with you. You must keep the temple clean if you wish to instal there the living Presence. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/the-mother-i#p7</ref>

…there is a kind of psychological distance created between the Grace and the individual. And due to this psychological distance the individual cannot receive the Grace and feels that It is not there. But It is there, in fact; only, as he has established this distance between the two, he doesn't feel It any longer. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/7-july-1954#p96</ref>

But if you take the attitude I have already spoken about and throw the blame upon the Grace and the Light, if you say to yourself, "There, it has gone and left me in the lurch", you may be sure that even thirty, forty, fifty years hence you will be still at the same place, you will not have changed. There will always be something which will rise suddenly and eat up your experience. And then, instead of progressing, you will be stuck there marking time because you cannot advance. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/26-april-1951#p27</ref>

This is the common idea One says, "God has rejected me", you know. It is not that. You may not be able to feel the Grace, but It will always be there, even with the worst of sinners, even with the worst of criminals, to help him to change, to be cured of his crime and sin if he wants to be. It won't reject him, but It won't help him to do evil. It wouldn't be the Grace any longer. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/7-july-1954#p90</ref>

When one does not repeat one's past mistakes, the divine power, the power of the divine Grace, abolishes their consequences—their karma—in the being. But as long as mistakes are repeated nothing can be abolished, because one re-creates them at every minute. When a person has made a serious error, say, a serious mistake (it can be serious or not, but we are concerned primarily with the serious ones), such mistakes have their consequences in life, a karma which has to be exhausted. The divine Grace, if you call upon it, has the power to abolish that karma, to cut short the consequences—but the Grace can only do this when you, within yourself, don't begin all over again, when the mistake committed is not renewed. The past can be completely purified and abolished, on condition that one does not keep making it into a perpetual present. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/agenda/02/june-2-1961#p2</ref>

If there is no personal effort, if the sadhak is too indolent and tamasic to try, why should the Grace act? <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/31/vigilance-resolution-will-and-the-divine-help#p58</ref>

If the will of the individual is towards perdition, if his ego becomes hostile to the Divine, then the Divine is not bound to show him a Grace he does not want at all and kicks at. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-grace-and-guidance#p26</ref>

As for withdrawal of Grace, it might be said that few are those from whom the Grace withdraws, but many are those who withdraw from the Grace. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-grace-and-guidance#p25</ref>

Strictly speaking, the Grace does not withdraw; people make it impossible for themselves to receive it. But you have only to take the right attitude and keep it, so that the Grace can once more do its saving work. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/17-july-1936#p2</ref>

Here, for each work given, the full strength and Grace are always given at the same time to do the work as it has to be done. If you do not feel the strength and the Grace it proves that there is some mistake in your attitude. The faith is lacking or you have fallen back on old tracks and old creeds and thus you lose all receptivity. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/1-october-1952#p1</ref>

Insincerity seems to be an incurable defect which nullifies the working of the Grace in a being. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/17/2-june-1965#p4</ref>

But for one who has faith in the Divine Grace, the return to the Light becomes easy. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/19-august-1953#p31</ref>