Surrender sounds like weakness, yet the will that bends to cosmic law rises transfigured: the integral will unites goodness, strength, and wisdom in one act.
By Roberto Assagioli
Assagioli Archive, Florence – Doc. #13559 [1]
Original Title: Adesione della Volontà.
Translated by Jan Kuniholm
Editorial Note
The abstract and contextual subtitle in this online edition have been added by the editor, Kenneth Sørensen, to support readability, navigation, and archival consistency. The original wording has not been altered.
Abstract
This brief meditative essay addresses the highest stage in the education of the will. Observing the ordered cosmos, Assagioli argues that individual will is not diminished but transfigured when it freely aligns with the universal law governing all existence. Cooperation with that greater Will places infinite energies at the person’s disposal and reveals sure laws for individual action. When the will becomes good, strong, and wise together, the integral will emerges.
The previous meditation has prepared us and led us to the last and highest pinnacle of the education of the will. In contemplating the great universe of which we are a particle, we feel that it is not something dead, but rather pervaded by eternal life. We feel that it is not ruled by chance and arbitrariness, but by august laws; we feel that it must have a meaning and a purpose. Even those who do not have a religious faith or a defined philosophy, if they observe the unfolding of natural phenomena without preconceptions, cannot fail to see how they obey a law of evolution and progress; they cannot fail to perceive in the star and the insect, in the atom and the heart, the same obscure drive towards a mysterious goal.
When we realize the truth and power of this universal law, it becomes clear to us how futile it is to oppose it, and we discover that the real cause of so many failures lies in our unconscious violations of that law. Then the impulse to adhere to it and obey it arises spontaneously in us. And once again, a paradoxical fact occurs: the will of the individual, which freely bends to the universal will, which immerses itself in it and merges with it, is not diminished by this. It is not cancelled; at the moment when it seems to die, it rises again, transfigured.
When our will agrees to cooperate harmoniously with the Will that moves the universe, it realizes that this Will in turn cooperates with it, placing its infinite energies at its disposal; and in the laws that govern the cosmos, it discovers the sure laws for its individual action.
(The capacity to adhere to a chosen direction presupposes that the choosing itself is authentic — which is the subject of our exploration of free will. Ed.)
Thus, the will, becoming good, becomes both stronger and wiser, and from this mutual completion of its three notes arises the perfect will, the integral will.
[1] The original document is a typed manuscript that was hand-corrected by the author. – Oath.
