Does the Divine merely tolerate and salvage the tragic consequences of lower Nature’s permitted play, or is such adversity actively orchestrated for some hidden evolutionary purpose? While the Divine allows an ignorant world to unfold according to its own mechanical laws, is an atrocity a contingent by-product despite which evolution progresses, or an intentional intervention through which it is forged? How can we spiritually reconcile such grave suffering with the overarching Divine Will?
Your intuitive sense about it is quite correct.
You write, ‘The Divine has allowed a world of Ignorance to operate according to its own lower laws, while secretly driving the evolutionary movement toward greater manifestation of consciousness.’
Yes, we may add that a world of ignorance is the inevitable consequence of involution. Involution implies that the entire Truth, Knowledge, Consciousness, Power, Ananda of the Divine enters into a state of complete self-oblivion, just as a tree is involved completely in a seed. The subsequent emergence of the tree from a seed is the story of evolutionary adventure. Quite naturally, it leads to inevitable steps and stages in which the first few steps are like the baby steps leading to forms and beings and creatures that are like half-products yet driven to be the whole. The first driver of this process at the human end is desire pushing material creatures to strive for completeness of existence, of consciousness, of power, of bliss. This takes the form of desire in creatures that feel separate and yet seek to be full through ignorant means. The result is strife and struggle, which also paradoxically ends up stimulating the evolution through the various challenges. This goes on until a time inevitably comes when the secret driver of the evolutionary process, that is Consciousness, begins to emerge more and more, evolving more and more conscious creatures that start evolving consciously. At this point, delight begins to take over from behind and one evolves rapidly from the human towards the Divine.
At the stage of animal and rakshasa, desire born of tamas, is the prime mover. At the level of the Asura, the mind develops and tries to justify the desires, but there is also the beginning of a higher seeking, though still under intense rajas. At the level of the human, Nara, a sattwic control begins to emerge. Then the Divine seed within ripens and begins to seek for the true consciousness, true delight in our origin, the Divine. The outer experiences of life correspond to the stage of our evolution. The evolved human being is often saved or, even if his life is sacrificed, it is a strategic divine sacrifice to awaken the other seeds and hasten the Divine emergence in creation. To understand this, one has to see the play from within, free from the human ideas of moral right and wrong or of justice. These are human ideas, important and valid and needed at our human stage of evolution, but cease as we grow into a greater Light.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
