The Asuric and lower forces are not merely accidental intrusions but residues of earlier evolutionary stages that must eventually be transformed rather than abolished by fiat. Divine intervention is possible, but not the default mode, because the aim is not mechanical control but conscious evolution and transformation.
If this is broadly correct, then I think I understand much better where you are coming from. But one doubt remains, and it is perhaps my deepest one.
My question was not really why God does not prevent all suffering, nor why freedom exists, nor why transformation is preferable to mere punishment.
If the universe can already operate through layered laws, exceptions, higher determinisms, selective interventions, evolutionary pressures, and changing modalities depending on consciousness, why could one further principle not be built into the architecture itself: that beyond a certain threshold of extreme perversity, especially where the most helpless and innocent are about to suffer catastrophic violation, Grace intervenes unfailingly and redirects the evolutionary process through some alternative route?
This would not abolish freedom altogether, nor reduce the world to automatons. Most of the spectrum of struggle, choice, growth, and consequence would remain intact.
So my difficulty is this: why is the preservation of a sufficiently open evolutionary field apparently given greater metaphysical priority than guaranteeing hard protective limits against the worst extremities?
To put it differently: I understand the argument for transformation rather than annihilation of lower tendencies. But why could transformation not proceed under a universe whose architecture itself includes inviolable red lines? Complexity, stratification, and evolution explain how the present system works.
But I am still unsure whether they justify why it had to be designed this way rather than another way. Or perhaps, from the Aurobindonian standpoint, my assumption itself is mistaken because such threshold-based guarantees would subtly alter the very nature of terrestrial evolution in a deeper way than I am appreciating. That is the point I am trying to understand.
It is not a question of threshold. The Grace does not wait for evil to cross a threshold to act. If it did so, then it will no more be Grace but part of the Law! All that it requires is a little call, a little openness, a little receptivity. Unfortunately, even such a thing is so rare. More often than not, our doubts and fears, our hidden resistances, impede the workings of the Grace just as a frightened bird is unable to hold the outstretched hand of the saviour and gives itself instead into the hands of the fowler, so too we live our life (most of us) given to the forces of darkness. We do not care to know or understand the laws that govern us. We enjoy our state of ignorance until one day we are struck by these forces. Then we call suddenly in desperation and the Grace does intervene, and we forget again, neither changing nor mending our ways, across lives, so to say. We feed the forces of darkness by our own hands and then deny their claim. If only we could call the Grace more often, listen to the little hints, signs and indications dropped all the time, try to eliminate ignorance and falsehood within us, then life would be so much different, not only for ourselves but for all. I am saying all this not for the sake of philosophy but based on countless experiences of life all around. We are as if attracted towards the darkness, but then blame the darkness when bitten by the snake hidden in its cover.
Still, I agree that the Earth and humanity have had enough of darkness and falsehood. It is high time that we get rid of it for good. That is the final promise that Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga holds. But who listens or cares. I am reminded of these lines from Savitri.
‘A dark concealed hostility is lodged
In the human depths, in the hidden heart of Time
That claims the right to change and mar God’s work.
A secret enmity ambushes the world’s march;
It leaves a mark on thought and speech and act:
It stamps stain and defect on all things done;
Till it is slain peace is forbidden on earth.
There is no visible foe, but the unseen
Is round us, forces intangible besiege,
Touches from alien realms, thoughts not our own
Overtake us and compel the erring heart;
Our lives are caught in an ambiguous net.
An adversary Force was born of old:
Invader of the life of mortal man,
It hides from him the straight immortal path.
A power came in to veil the eternal Light,
A power opposed to the eternal will
Diverts the messages of the infallible Word,
Contorts the contours of the cosmic plan:
A whisper lures to evil the human heart,
It seals up wisdom’s eyes, the soul’s regard,
It is the origin of our suffering here,
It binds earth to calamity and pain.
This all must conquer who would bring down God’s peace.
This hidden foe lodged in the human breast
Man must overcome or miss his higher fate.
This is the inner war without escape.’…
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/34/the-way-of-fate-and-the-problem-of-pain#p108)
‘Heaven’s call is rare, rarer the heart that heeds;
The doors of light are sealed to common mind
And earth’s needs nail to earth the human mass,
Only in an uplifting hour of stress
Men answer to the touch of greater things:
Or, raised by some strong hand to breathe heaven-air,
They slide back to the mud from which they climbed;
In the mud of which they are made, whose law they know
They joy in safe return to a friendly base,
And, though something in them weeps for glory lost
And greatness murdered, they accept their fall.
To be the common man they think the best,
To live as others live is their delight.
For most are built on Nature’s early plan
And owe small debt to a superior plane;
The human average is their level pitch,
A thinking animal’s material range.’
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/34/the-eternal-day-the-souls-choice-and-the-supreme-consummation#p144)
It is for this reason that Sri Aurobindo and The Mother want to establish the Supramental manifestation regardless of Man and his efforts. The problem for them was not just philosophical but practical as well as spiritual. Yet how many are ready to work towards the future that would be free of evil in any form. Most human beings remain busy either blaming God or denying Him. Or, more commonly, shutting the tireless Grace inside the cagebox of Religion. What I am trying to say is that there are many ways of explaining the problem for karma to dharma and everything else. But what is important is to ensure that the earth is freed from these Asuric elements for good and forever. It is for this that the Avatar comes, but the material creation is hardly ready.
Affectionately,
Alok da
