Dear friends, dear brothers and sisters, dear seekers, I wish to give a short talk on confidence. Here we are in Cambridge. Cambridge immediately awakens confidence in us. What we call confidence in the outer world is nothing short of assurance in the inner world. Therefore, I bow to the confidence and the assurance in Cambridge.
Confidence awakens our physical. Confidence energises our vital. Confidence illumines our mind. Confidence purifies our heart. A pure heart, an illumined mind, an energetic and dynamic vital and a wakeful body can and will manifest the divine realities here on earth.
Confidence is a divine revelation of our inner assurance. There is an unseen reality within us, a divine Pilot, an Inner Pilot who moulds and shapes our lives. When we hear the message of the Inner Pilot, in our outer life we feel confidence. Confidence is an outer gift from above, whereas assurance is an inner gift from above. Confidence is self-awareness. We want to be aware of ourselves. We want to know what our source is, where we came from, what we are doing here on earth. We want to know our respective roles in this cosmic Game, this Lila. Our confidence brings to the fore the inner vision, the reality that we are aiming at, that we want to grow into.
Confidence is not a display of our egocentric life. Confidence is a divine force. Ego binds us, blinds us. Ego offers us the message of separativity and self-enjoyment. Confidence, on the other hand, wants to express its universal oneness. It is for all; it is for the Infinite, the Vast. Confidence cannot be satisfied all by itself. It wants to grow into the Universal Light and Transcendental Height.
When we have confidence in ourselves, we realise the ultimate Truth and Light, the Absolute Supreme. When God has confidence in us, He makes us not only His perfect instruments, but conscious representatives of His Divinity, His Reality, His Infinity, His Eternity and His Immortality on earth. With our confidence in God, we go up and reach His Transcendental Height. With God's Confidence in us, God comes down and makes us His Infinity, His Eternity, His Immortality. And this is not the end of His Game. Then He wants us to manifest what we have become.
Confidence is introduction. Confidence introduces our earthly reality to the divine Reality. And the divine Reality introduces its wealth — infinite Peace, Light and Bliss — to us when we are confident.
Life is either meaningful or meaningless. For those who do not seek, life is meaningless, a barren desert. For seekers, at every moment life is meaningful and fruitful; life has a purpose, a meaning, a reality and an ultimate Goal. What brings us the message of the ultimate Goal, what brings us the reality of the inner world, the more illumining, more fulfilling higher world? It is our confidence. With our confidence-light, we dig deep within; and while digging within we cultivate the bumper-crop of realisation, liberation and perfection.
An unaspiring person talks to himself and talks to the world. But he cannot talk to the Ultimate Reality. It is only a man of confidence, inner confidence, divine confidence, supreme confidence who can talk to the Highest Reality: the Transcendental Vision and the Universal Reality.
One portion of divinity comes down into the world and another remains above. The one that remains above is known as the Father-Reality and the one that comes down is known as the Son-Reality. Again, there comes a time when the two realities become inseparably one and tell the world of their oneness. Jesus Christ, the Saviour, announced, “I and my Father are one.” His confidence-light he brought down into the world; and it was his confidence-light that uttered, “I and my Father are one.” When divinity enters into humanity and illumines humanity, at that time humanity claims divinity as its very own.
Confidence is oneness with the Beyond, the oneness of earth-life with Heaven-life. Where God is, confidence is bound to be. God has given us the secret key to open up His Heart’s Door and that secret key is confidence. We pray, we meditate, only to cultivate one divine quality and that one divine quality is confidence. Confidence shows us the way to go ahead, the way to dive deep within, the way to fly above. Confidence is the pioneer that constantly leads us, guides us, beckons us to the ultimate Source.
Each individual has teeming questions: “Who am I? Where do I come from? What is my ultimate goal?” All the questions of our inner and outer life can be answered by one solitary thing: confidence. If we have confidence, then we can explore the inner world. If we have confidence, then we can explore the outer world.
Here we are all seekers. We want to know the reality that we eternally are and that we are going to offer to the world at large. And for that what we need is perfection, self-perfection. It is only in self-perfection that we can please the Inner Pilot, the Supreme Pilot, the world around us, the world within us. This perfection is our constant confidence in ourselves and in our Inner Pilot.
Again, this confidence has a Source. Its Source is God’s Compassion-Light and Compassion-Delight. God grants us Light in boundless measure at our journey’s start. And it is He, the Supreme, the Eternal Pilot, who grants us eternal, boundless Delight. Light energises us. Light leads us, guides us to our ultimate destination, where we see the transformation of Light into Delight. Delight fulfils us. Delight immortalises us.
We aspire to become good, to become loving, to become devoted, to become useful to the world at large. But this aspiration also needs something from us. It is confidence that aspiration expects from each seeker. If the seeker is wanting in confidence, then his aspiration can never be regular, it can never be spontaneous, it can never be continuous. But if inside his aspiration confidence looms large, then he walks along a sunlit road to his destined goal.
A child has confidence in his parents. He feels that his parents know everything, have everything and are everything for him. Similarly, a seeker has all confidence in his Inner Pilot, the Supreme, who is guiding his destiny, his life, his aspiration, his realisation, his reality to the ultimate Goal.
Each day we are granted by the Author of all good, out of His infinite Bounty, confidence both in our inner life and in our outer life. But if we use our physical mind — our earth-bound, sophisticated, obscure, unlit, unaspiring, intellectual mind — to search, we may not feel God’s Confidence-Light. For the earth-bound mind feels that it is complete in itself; it does not need any reality other than its own existence.
But the heart constantly feels that it can house something more, that it can see something more, that it can grow into something more, that it has something more to offer to the world at large. The heart has the eagerness to receive and to achieve from the world within and from the world without. The heart has a constant inner thirst to be universal, to be transcendental. Therefore, the heart always looks within and around to grasp and invoke the infinite Realities that abide in God’s entire Creation. The heart comes to realise that there is only one way to achieve and grow into these infinite Realities and that is the way of self-giving. And what is self-giving today, tomorrow that very thing is God-becoming. So, on the strength of self-giving, our aspiring heart becomes both universal and transcendental. And this self-giving heart has a source of its own and that source is confidence. Confidence also has its source. Its source is God’s Compassion, God’s infinite, unconditional, immortal Compassion in man, for man.
