The 3 great Divine qualities

The 3 great Divine qualities are : chit or consciousness ; ananda or bliss ; sat or existence. Now it is sort of clear the consciousness is mirrored in intelligence in man--the same quality, only in tiny. It is equally clear that existence and activity belong to one another.

You can only exist as you act outwards. The form of the word shows It --"ex, out of" ; it is manifested life.

That leaves the 3rd, bliss, to correspond with will, and some folks are rather puzzled with that, and they ask : "What is the correspondence between bliss and will?" but if you come down to need, and the objects of desire, you'll be able to solve the riddle.

The nature of the Self is bliss. Throw that nature down into matter and what's going to be the expression of the bliss nature? Wish for contentment, the looking for after fascinating objects, which it imagines will give it the contentment which is of its own necessary nature, and which it is repeatedly looking to realize among the obstacles of the Earth. Its nature being bliss, it looks for for contentment and that wish for contentment is to be transmuted into will. All these correspondences have an extreme meaning if you'll only look into them, and that universal "will-to-live" interprets itself as the "desire for happiness" that you find in every person and lady, in each sentient creature.

Has it ever struck you how certainly you are justifying that research of your own nature by the way you accept contentment as your right, and resent anguish, and ask what you have done to warrant it? You don't ask the same about contentment, which is the natural result of your own nature. The thing that must be explained isn't contentment but discomfort, the things that are against the character of the Self that's bliss. And so, looking into this, we see how want and will are both the determination to be ecstatic. But the one is ignorant, drawn out by outer objects ; the other is self-conscious, started and ruled from inside. Want is awakened and directed from outside ; and when the same aspect rules from inside, it is will. There's no difference in their nature. Thus desire on the Trail of Forthgoing becomes will on the Trail of Return.