Does the unveiled Divine Force act only to the extent that the ignorant adhara can open to and assimilate it? If so, does this same principle of intervention according to the vessel’s capacity apply to influences descending from higher planes?
Spiritual experience affirms that creation exists at least at two levels. In the evolutionary world like ours, it can be seen as two stages of growth. The first stage is from the womb till the completion of schooling. It is the school of Ignorance where the soul learns its lessons and evolves through three stages: tamas, rajas, sattwa. In the first stage it is subject to all kinds of forces of darkness, forces violent and ruthless, forces cataclysmic in nature whose purpose is to create upheavals so that the dull inertia can wake up. The soul is in its infancy and completely subject to the violent forces of nature. Then comes the field of rajas where it learns to struggle, fight, conquer, at first outer challenges and obstacles and later the inner ones. Finally, it prepares to pass out of the school when it enters the sattwic state where the sense of right and wrong comes up and the urge to do nobler deeds and higher things. In short, the schooling process is meant to take us from a self-centered Asuric stage to a truth-centered Daivi stage. The things you mentioned- rapes and crimes and murders and drugs and senseless violence are the phase when the soul, the true person, is largely asleep and though the form is human, the consciousness is subhuman, driven by animal and rakshasic impulses. Naturally, those whose consciousness is undeveloped are subject to these forces, just as someone living in a place infested with snakes and rakshasas will automatically be vulnerable. Yet this stage could not be dispensed with as the journey starts from complete nescience, total darkness.
Then slowly we grow and as we grow the taste, tendencies, temperaments and the experiences all change. We enter another zone. Finally, we are ready for the direct touch of God and the rapid transformation.
Of course, God is there even in the darkest night of tamas, primarily as the Destroyer. He doesn’t necessarily save but supports the tormented who yet must go through the challenging school. He is like a parent waiting for the child after the classes are over. When things take an extreme turn, He does intervene as well as teaches the teachers. But his direct action begins only when we have gone through the preliminary schooling and are ready. It is not a single incident or a single life process either. You can put it as playing the good cop and the bad cop depending upon the need and the stage.
Enclosing below two letters of Sri Aurobindo explaining this.
‘This world has a double aspect. It seems to be based on a material Inconscience and an ignorant mind and life full of that Inconscience; error and sorrow, death and suffering are the necessary consequence. But there is evidently too a partially successful endeavour and an imperfect growth towards Light, Knowledge, Truth, Good, Happiness, Harmony, Beauty,—at least a partial flowering of these things. The meaning of this world must evidently lie in this opposition; it must be an evolution which is leading or struggling towards higher things out of a first darker appearance. Whatever guidance there is must be given under these conditions of opposition and struggle and must be leading towards that higher state of things. It is leading the individual, certainly, and the world, presumably, towards the higher state, but through the double terms of knowledge and ignorance, light and darkness, death and life, pain and pleasure, happiness and suffering; none of the terms can be excluded until the higher status is reached and established. It is not and cannot be, ordinarily, a guidance which at once rejects the darker terms or still less a guidance which brings us solely and always nothing but happiness, success and good fortune. Its main concern is with the growth of our being and consciousness, the growth towards a higher self, towards the Divine, eventually towards a highest Light, Truth and Bliss; the rest is secondary, sometimes a means, sometimes a result, not a primary purpose.
The true sense of the guidance becomes clearer when we can go deep within and see from there more intimately the play of the forces and receive intimations of the Will behind them. The surface mind can get only an imperfect glimpse. When we are in contact with the Divine or in contact with an inner knowledge and vision, we begin to see all the circumstances of our life in a new light and can observe how they all tended without our knowing it towards the growth of our being and consciousness, towards the work we had to do, towards some development that had to be made,—not only what seemed good, fortunate or successful but the struggles, failures, difficulties, upheavals. But with each person the guidance works differently according to his nature, the conditions of his life, his cast of consciousness, his stage of development, his need of farther experience. We are not automata but conscious beings and our mentality, our will and its decisions, our attitude to life and demand on it, our motives and movements help to determine our course; they may lead to much suffering and evil, but through it all, the guidance makes use of them for our growth in experience and consequently the development of our being and consciousness. All advance by however devious ways, even in spite of what seems a going backwards or going astray, gathering whatever experience is necessary for the soul’s destiny. When we are in close contact with the Divine, a protection can come in which helps or directly guides or moves us; it does not throw aside all difficulties, sufferings or dangers, but it carries us through them and out of them—except where for a special purpose there is need of the opposite.’
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-grace-and-guidance#p30)
Hope it is clearer now.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
