But even after reading Savitri and the Life Divine, the question did strike me that even for the sake of a Divine Life, why do many kids have to suffer gruesome torments by the hands of humans, worse than monsters, such as the example of Turks in the novel?
Ivan poses this question to Alyoshya. I am also thinking about why God has chosen this path of intense suffering, which is unjust even from the pov of strict karma theory. Can you share your views on this?
This is a question that has vexed every sensitive heart since the awakening of self-consciousness in man. Animals don’t suffer from the gift of reflection and the seeking for answers that the conscious experience of psychological suffering brings. Here itself, we find the first hint of the intense suffering that we experience. Unlike the animal kind, our suffering generalises, tends to change into the suffering experienced by others in far back times through the unseen bond of sympathy, raising questions centuries after those who suffered are dead and gone. Could suffering and evil then be a means to arouse consciousness and love in a humanity largely animal, unthinking and selfish? Does not suffering shakes us up and thereby awakens in us the urge to know Truth and seek for a greater Light and Wisdom? In fact, often it is not those who immediately suffer who are thus awakened but those who watch the sufferer moan through the lens of history who raise these questions. This is the immediate answer to the reason for the existence of suffering. It gives birth to a Buddha, a Christ, Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo, who then find a far greater solution to the suffering of mankind.
Man, in his ignorance, recognises only the physical suffering. But greater beings recognise even much more so the suffering of the soul trapped in ignorance. This is important to understand because if we remain glued only to physical suffering and outer afflictions, we shall only exchange one form of suffering with another and never find its lasting cure. We shall, for example, eliminate poverty, ensure by some kind of international law or collective pressure that wars don’t take place, make execution illegal, yet suffering will remain as its root cause has not been addressed. This is what writers like Dostoevsky miss. They have enquired but not gone deep enough in their inquiry. Realism, yes, but first we should know the Real, clean the lens of the mind, before we can dig deeper. When we do that, we see not only the suffering of the poor but also the suffering of the rich, not only the physical suffering of the tortured who possibly greatens his soul in spiritual strength rising on wings of fire, but worse still the inner spiritual suffering of the torturer who, though a victor, slides backwards in his evolutionary journey.
One has to see things in their totality before we look into the possible solutions. But to see in totality is to see beyond the limited frame of time and space in which things take place. History sees things as sections frozen in time and space. Hence, it doesn’t quite understand the psycho-spiritual roots of suffering. Religions, especially Semitic religions, equally fail to understand since they have the conception of a God, a highly anthropomorphic God who judges good and evil, rewards and punishes as a human would, except that He, being seemingly almighty and wise, can act with much greater power and authority. The idea of such a God is, I am afraid, a fiction of the human mind. In fact, if God were simply an aggrandised human, then he wouldn’t be a god worth pursuing. This idea of an arbitrary God sitting in some heaven above and condemning people to suffering here because they disobeyed him or the law He gave, would be nothing but a monster. But this is a problem of the modern mind, steeped in the Christian conception of God or else of no God!
But when we dig into the Sanatan Dharma, then we begin to find interesting answers. We discover first that God did not make the world; He has rather become the world. In other words, He bears the burden of the world’s suffering, absorbs the shock of pain in the tortured beast and man, gives us the strength to bear and endure, helps the soul awaken and grow in wisdom and force, and above all, holds us through it all carrying us through the pleasures and pains and the tortures and raptures towards the heights we are meant to climb. All these strange ideas of a strict karmic law are simply man’s ways of humanising the Divine. There are several talks available on this subject on Auromaa, so I wouldn’t elaborate here. Rebirth is not a mechanical tribunal of justice or a delivery of reward and punishment by a blind judge. It is instead a mechanism for the evolution of soul from its nascent seedlike state into the fullness of the Godhead it is meant to realise. Would this growth come without challenges and a price? Shall the child grow into a warrior and a sage if he remains cuddled in the cocoon of his mumma’s blanket? Can one grow into the greatness of Shiva without the capacity to drink poison, or grow into the sweetness, wisdom and strength of Krishna without facing the Kurukshetra? Can a man grow into the greatness and glory of his manhood while nurturing weak sentimentality in his heart and fear in his members? Therefore, these things have been allowed in creation during our transition from the animal humanity of today towards the divine superhumanity of tomorrow. Pain, suffering, evil and torture are not the beginning or end of our long journey across lives. They are incidents through which the immortal soul passes in its Godward climb to reclaim the greatness that is due. The origin and the end are Delight. In the middle, we experience its triple disguise as pleasure, pain and indifference. As long as we seek pleasure or remain stuck in our small little personal happiness, pain will chase us and enter us even when everything outside is comfortable. We will still be tormented by our inner demons, which is worse because they are unseen phantoms of the mind. But when we turn our feet towards the summit, then even the most physical torture turns into a step of ascension and hence gives an inner joy until one day it is all left behind us.
This is the reason for the suffering, as a spur to our evolution, to turn our attention towards deeper and higher things, as a means to hasten our Godward journey, as a mechanism inbuilt in creation to help open doors to a greater strength and wisdom within us.
Let me close with these lines from Savitri.
‘Arisen from the tragic crash of life,
Arisen from the body’s torture and death,
The spirit rises mightier by defeat;
Its godlike wings grow wider with each fall.
Its splendid failures sum to victory.
O man, the events that meet thee on thy road,
Though they smite thy body and soul with joy and grief,
Are not thy fate,—they touch thee awhile and pass;
Even death can cut not short thy spirit’s walk:
Thy goal, the road thou choosest are thy fate.
On the altar throwing thy thoughts, thy heart, thy works,
Thy fate is a long sacrifice to the gods
Till they have opened to thee thy secret self
And made thee one with the indwelling God.’
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/34/the-way-of-fate-and-the-problem-of-pain#p231)
Affectionately.
Alok Da
