object:1.10 - Theodicy - Nature Makes No Mistakes
book classPreparing for the Miraculous
author class:George Van Vrekhem
subject class:Integral Yoga
class:chapter
T
he term theodicy comes from the Greek theos,
which means god, and dik, which means justice.
Theodicy could therefore be defined as the justification
of divine providence in view of the existence of evil and
suffering in the world. According to the Merriam-Webster
Online Dictionary the meaning is defense of Gods good-
ness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil. The
definition in the Encyclopaedia Britannica is explanation of
why a perfectly good, almighty and all-knowing God per-
mits evil. Both definitions omit suffering.214
e l e v e n ta l k s
The Problem
The intractable problem of evil and suffering is glaring-
ly present in the written testimonies of all cultures past and
present. It is the cause of consternation when confronted
with the Holocaust, a tsunami or other catastrophes, as well
as when confronted with the torture and the vicious or ran-
dom killing of a few or even a single human being. To this
problem every religion has to find an answer in order to
justify the actions of its God, whoever he is supposed to be.
Sri Aurobindo considered the problem as follows in The Life
Divine: God being All-Good, who created pain and evil? If
we say that pain is a trial and an ordeal, we do not solve the
moral problem, we arrive at an immoral or non-moral God
an excellent world-mechanist perhaps, a cunning psy-
chologist, but not a God of Good and Love whom we can
worship, only a God of might to whose law we must submit
or whose caprice we may hope to propitiate. For one who
invents torture as a means of test and ordeal, stands con-
victed either of deliberate cruelty or of moral insensibility
and, if a moral being at all, is inferior to the highest instinct
of his own creatures. 1
In modern day philosophy and science we find the
problem voiced for instance in this way: When you con-
sider all the physical suffering that there is in the world;
when you consider the stupidity of a good number of peo-
ple; when you consider the cataclysms of nature; when you
consider that all of human life is only a transitory phase of
the universe, I think it is difficult to suppose that [the] om-
nipotence [of God] could not possibly have done better.
(Bertrand Russell) The universe we observe has precisely
the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no
design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind
1 Sri Aurobindo: The Life Divine, p. 101.t h e o d ic y: natur e doe s not mak e mistakes
215
pitiless indifference. (Richard Dawkins) Omnipotence
raises some awkward theological questions. Is God free to
prevent evil? If he is omnipotent, yes. Why then does he
fail to do so? This devastating argument was deployed by
[the philosopher] David Hume: if the evil in the world is
from the intention of the Deity, then he is not benevolent.
If the evil is contrary to his intention, he is not omnipotent.
He cannot be both omnipotent and benevolent (as most re-
ligions claim). (Paul Davies)
The God here put into question is the Abrahamic God
who stands outside the creation brought by him into be-
ing and for which he is therefore responsible. Theologians
of the Abrahamic religions may say that he is an abstract
God, rare mystics in these religions may say that he can be
met in the heart, yet the general idea is that of an anthropo-
morphic autocrat floating somewhere above the clouds or
sitting on a throne in heaven.
The integral Vedantic affirmation agrees with the
mystics, because its perception of God is a matter of spir-
itual experience confirmed by many great experiencers:
rishis, seers, yogis, mystics. According to this affirmation
all is God, all is the Brahman, all is That, all is the Self, and
there cannot be anything outside or apart from That. If it
be true that the Self alone exists, it must also be true that all
is the Self, asserts Sri Aurobindo. And if this Self, God or
Brahman is no helpless state, no bounded power, no lim-
ited personality, but the self-conscious All, there must be
some good and inherent reason in it for the manifestation,
to discover which we must proceed on the hypothesis of
some potency, some wisdom, some truth of being in all that
is manifested.
The discord and apparent evil of the world must in their
sphere be admitted, but not accepted as our conquerors. ...216
e l e v e n ta l k s
For we cannot suppose that the sole Entity is compelled by
something outside or other than itself, since no such thing
exists. Nor can we suppose that it submits unwillingly to
something partial within itself which is hostile to its whole
Being, denied by It and yet too strong for It; for this would
be only to erect in other language the same contradiction of
an All and something other than the All.
Even if we say that the universe exists merely because
the Self in its absolute impartiality tolerates all things alike,
viewing with indifference all actualities and all possibili-
ties, yet is there something that wills the manifestation and
supports it, and this cannot be something other than the
All. Brahman is indivisible in all things and whatever is
willed in the world has been ultimately willed by the Brah-
man. It is only our relative consciousness, alarmed or baf-
fled by the phenomenon of evil, ignorance and pain in the
cosmos, that seeks to deliver the Brahman from responsi-
bility for Itself and its workings by erecting some opposite
principle, Maya or Mara, conscious Devil or self-existent
principle of evil. There is one Lord and Self and the many
are only His representations and becomings. 2
Delight of existence
One of the main tenets of Vedanta is that the ultimate
attributes of the Divine are sat-chit/tapas-ananda, Existence-
Consciousness/Force-Bliss. This is what in the last or high-
est instance can be said of the Divine. These attributes
are one, they are not and cannot be separate. The singing
word ananda is the most difficult to translate, it means the
most intense joy, delight, felicity, ecstasy or bliss. This is
a divine attribute, different from any of the human feel-
ings suggested by the enumeration. The truth is ananda,
2
Id., pp. 31-32.t h e o d ic y: natur e doe s not mak e mistakes
217
writes Sri Aurobindo. But this is a knowledge for which
mankind is not ready. 3 Delight is existence, Delight is the
secret of creation; Delight is the root of birth, Delight is the
cause of remaining in existence, Delight is the end of birth
and that into which creation ceases. From Ananda, says
the Upanishad, all existences are born, by Ananda they re-
main in being and increase, to Ananda they depart. 4 And
the Mother said: It is Joy that has created, it is Joy that will
accomplish. 5
Absoluteness of conscious existence is illimitable bliss
of conscious existence; the two are only different phrases
for the same thing. All illimitableness, all infinity, all ab-
soluteness is pure delight. 6 But then: This ancient Ve-
dantic theory of cosmic origin is immediately confronted
in the human mind by two powerful contradictions, the
emotional and sensational consciousness of pain and the
ethical problem of evil. For if the world be an expression
of Sachchidananda, not only of existence that is conscious
force for that can easily be admitted but of existence
that is also infinite self-delight, how are we to account for
the universal presence of grief, of suffering, of pain? asks
Sri Aurobindo in The Life Divine. All being Sacchidananda,
how can pain and suffering at all exist? 7
He approaches the problem from four angles. The first
one, quite revelatory, is that we are not consciously aware
of the pleasure of existence by which we are carried
through all our life experiences, negative as well as posi-
tive. In fact we shall find that the sum of the pleasure of
3 Sri Aurobindo: Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, p. 63.
4 Sri Aurobindo: The Life Divine, p. 101.
5
The Mother: Entretiens 1955, p. 454.
6 Sri Aurobindo: The Life Divine, p. 91.
7
Id., pp. 92-93.218
e l e v e n ta l k s
existence far exceeds the sum of the pain of existence ... Pre-
cisely because the latter is normal, we do not treasure it ...
The normal satisfaction of existence which is always there
regardless of event and particular cause or object, affects us
as something neutral which is neither pleasure nor pain.
It is actually this mostly subconscious pleasure of existence
which keeps us going through thick and thin. There too
hidden, profound, subconscious, it is that which enables
and compels things to remain in existence. It is the reason
of that clinging to existence, that overmastering will-to-be,
translated vitally in the instinct of self-preservation, physi-
cally as the imperishability of matter, mentally as the sense
of immortality which attends the formed existence through
all its phases of self-development. 8
We must first make it clear to ourselves that just as
when we speak of universal consciousness we mean some-
thing different from, more essential and wider than the
waking mental consciousness of the human being; so also
when we speak of universal delight of existence we mean
something different from, more essential and wider than
the ordinary emotional and sensational pleasure of the in-
dividual human creature. ...
Sensation and emotion are, in their essential being, the
pains no less than the pleasures, that delight of existence
which they seek but fail to reveal fail because of division,
ignorance of self and egoism. 9
Sri Aurobindos second point is the one we have already
mentioned above: that the Judeo-Christian God stands out-
side his creation, and that therefore the flaws in this creation
must be his handiwork. The difficulty [i.e. the problem of
suffering and evil] arises only if we assume the existence
8 Id., pp. 94 and 100.
9 Id., p. 99.t h e o d ic y: natur e doe s not mak e mistakes
219
of an extracosmic personal God, not Himself the universe,
one who has created good and evil, pain and suffering for
His creatures, but Himself stands above and unaffected by
them, watching, ruling, doing His will with a suffering and
struggling world or, if not doing His will, if allowing the
world to be driven by an inexorable law ... then not God,
not omnipotent, not all-good and all-loving. The Vedanta,
on the contrary, establishes that all that is, is He. If then
evil and suffering exist, it is He that bears the evil and suf-
fering in the creature in whom He has embodied Himself.
The problem then changes entirely. The question is no
longer how came God to create for His creatures a suffer-
ing and evil of which He is Himself incapable and there-
fore immune, but how came the sole and infinite Existence-
Consciousness-Bliss to admit into itself that which is not
bliss, that which seems to be its positive negation. 10
Suffering and evil are ethical problems which we meas-
ure according to moral norms. Sri Aurobindo, thirdly, draws
our attention to this and makes us realize that we do not
live in an ethical world. ... Material nature is not ethical ...
Animal or vital Nature is also non-ethical, although as it
progresses it manifests the crude material out of which the
highest animal evolves the ethical impulse. (Evolutionary
psychology will agree with this.) Ethics is a matter of the
mind and therefore a stage in evolution. It is man the men-
tal being who evaluates God as obligatorily good an
attribute which is not there in the Vedantic trinity. 11
It is only from the human standpoint that the world has
three layers: infra-ethical, ethical, supra-ethical. The ethical
10 Id., pp. 94 and 95.
11 To Plato the Good was synonymous with the Supreme Being.
This adjective, with its ethical associations, applied to God has caused
enormous confusion in all subsequent philosophy and theology refer-
ring to the great Greek.220
e l e v e n ta l k s
standpoint applies only to a temporary though all-impor-
tant passage from one universality to another. Sri Auro
bindo calls this passage all-important because it relates to
the crucial human role in the evolution of life on Earth. The
human is the great X, the ensouled intermediary between
the animal and the supra-man. It is in this passage from
the lower to the higher life-forms that there intervenes the
phenomenon of pain and suffering which seems to contra-
dict the fundamental nature of its being. This and this alone
is the root-problem. ... There is an anandamaya behind the
manomaya [the central sense perception], a vast Bliss-Self
behind the limited mental self, and the latter is only a shad-
owy image and disturbed reflection of the former. The truth
of ourselves lies within and not on the surface. 12
Fourthly, suffering, like everything else in nature, has
its function and meaning. Pain of mind and body is a de-
vice of Nature, that is to say, of Force in her works, meant
to subserve a definite transitional end in her upward evolu-
tion. ... It does not come into being in the purely physical
world so long as Life does not enter into it; for till then me-
chanical methods are sufficient. Its office begins when life
with its frailty and imperfect possession of Matter enters
on the scene; it grows with the growth of Mind in life. ...
Its eventual elimination must be an essential point in the
destined conquest of the soul over subjection to Matter and
egoistic limitation in Mind. This elimination is possible be-
cause pain and pleasure themselves are currents, one im-
perfect, the other perverse, but still currents of the delight of
existence. ... The nature of suffering is a [provisional] failure
of the conscious-force in us to meet the shocks of existence
and a consequent shrinking and contraction, and its root is
an inequality of that receptive and possessing force due to
12 Id., pp. 97, 98 and 105.t h e o d ic y: natur e doe s not mak e mistakes
221
our self-limitation by egoism consequent on the ignorance
of our true Self, of Sachchidananda. 13
If one does not accept the reality of the spirit, consider-
ations like the above are impossible to accept from a materi-
alistic viewpoint, but then an understanding of the problem
of suffering and evil remains out of the question. If one ac-
cepts the reality of the spirit but has not realized the cos-
mic consciousness, these considerations are not concretely
comprehensible. But if the fundamental Vedantic premises
and the Vedantic conception of the universe are accepted
or experienced as valid, the logical conclusion is inevitable.
In Savitri, Sri Aurobindo has expressed the same point
of view as follows:
Bliss is the secret stuff of all that lives,
Even pain and grief are garbs of world-delight,
It hides behind thy sorrow and thy cry.
And he has the divine sage Narad say to Savitris royal
parents:
Where Ignorance is, there suffering too must come ...
Pain was the first-born of the Inconscience
Which was thy bodys dumb original base ...
Pain is the hammer of the gods to break
A dead resistance in the mortals heart ...
Pain is the hand of Nature sculpturing men
To greatness ... 14
In Nature there are no errors
The first premise of Vedanta, its integral affirma-
tion, is that all is That. Brahman is the Alpha and the
13 Id., pp. 107 ff.
14 Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, pp. 454 and 443.222
e l e v e n ta l k s
Omega. Brahman is the One besides whom there is noth-
ing else existent. 15 All action, all mental, vital, physi-
cal activities in the world are the operation of a universal
Energy, a Consciousness-Force which is the power of the
Cosmic Spirit working out the cosmic and individual truth
in things. Therefore in reality all that we call undivine
can only be an action of the four divine principles them-
selves. Each principle is also the other principles and the
Divine as a whole. Each single act and movement falls
by the fiat of the omnipotent omniscience which works as
the Supermind inherent in things. 16 Chance is not in this
universe, writes Sri Aurobindo in his Thoughts and Apho-
risms. 17 If there were chance in this universe, it would not
be an inherent manifestation of the divine Unity and Truth.
The Divine would be a flawed Entity.
If all is the One, then nature in her entirety is also the One.
What Nature does, is really done by the Spirit. 18 All her
works are instinct with an absolute intelligence. 19 Nature
is part of the divine manifestation; the divine manifestation
is the work of the divine Power, the Consciousness/Force,
also called the Great Mother, or known as Maya, Prakriti,
Lila. 20 World is the play of the Mother of things moved to
cast Herself for ever into infinite forms and avid of eternally
outpouring experiences. 21 This leads to the conclusion that
there cannot be any mistakes in Nature. When we speak
indeed of the errors of Nature, we use a figure illegitimately
borrowed from our human psychology and experience, for
15 Sri Aurobindo: The Life Divine, p. 33.
16 Id., pp. 923, 160 and 196.
17 Sri Aurobindo: Thoughts and Aphorisms, p. 5.
18 Sri Aurobindo: The Life Divine, p. 370.
19 Sri Aurobindo: The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 98.
20 See talk 7: Bridges across the Afterlife.
21 Sri Aurobindo: The Life Divine, p. 102.t h e o d ic y: natur e doe s not mak e mistakes
223
in Nature there are no errors but only the deliberate measure
of her paces traced and retraced in a prefigured rhythm, of
which each step has a meaning and its place in the action
and reaction of her gradual advance. 22 And Sri Aurobindo
affirms: We may be sure that if [in Nature] destruction is
done, it is that for that end the destruction was indispen-
sable. 23
If there are no errors in Nature, and if there is no chance,
and if all is the Divine, suffering and evil must also be That.
But this does not answer the burning question Why? aris-
ing from the bleeding heart of humanity, as it arose from the
lips of the Mother herself Pourquoi ? in the last years of
her avataric yoga. Sri Aurobindo puts the question bluntly
and gives the following answer: But still what is the pur-
pose and origin of the disharmony why came this division
and ego, this world of painful evolution? Why must evil
and sorrow enter into the divine Good, Bliss and Peace? It
is hard to answer to the human intelligence on its own level,
for the consciousness to which the origin of this phenomenon be-
longs and to which it stands as it were automatically justified is a
supra-intellectual knowledge, is a cosmic and not an individual-
ized human intelligence ... 24
The mind of the human being, halfway up the ladder
of evolution, is an instrument that only can grasp part of a
whole, not the whole itself. The divine manifestation is a
constant cosmic act of Consciousness/Force which far ex-
ceeds the ordinary capacity of the human mind, but which
can be and has been acceded to by humans in a spiritual
widening called cosmic consciousness. We do indeed
find in some mystics who have been capable of acquiring
22 Sri Aurobindo: The Ideal of Human Unity, p. 99 (emphasis added).
23 Id., p. 347.
24 Sri Aurobindo: The Life Divine, p. 28 (emphasis added).224
e l e v e n ta l k s
the cosmic consciousness the supreme affirmation that all
is good or right as it is. It is however in the vision and work
of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that we find the supreme
justification of the divine manifestation in its origin, its ev-
olution, and its glorious, endless future end.
The gnostic explanation
The following story told by the Mother to the Ashram
youth contains in essence the theodicy of Gnosticism through-
out the centuries, while also completing it. The Mother
stressed that it was a story, and that one could know its
inner meaning only by experience on the spiritual path.
When the Supreme decided to exteriorize Himself in
order to be able to see Himself, the first thing in Himself
which He exteriorized was the Knowledge of the world
and the Power to create it [i.e. the Great Mother]. This
Knowledge-Consciousness and Force began its work; and
in the supreme Will there was a plan, and the first principle
of this plan was the expression of both the essential Joy and
the essential Freedom, which seemed to be the most inter-
esting feature of this creation. (It may be noted here that
the crucial principles of Joy and Freedom at the origin of
creation are hardly ever mentioned elsewhere in the gnos-
tic literature.)
So intermediaries were needed to express this Joy and
Freedom in forms. And at first four Beings [or Forces] were
emanated to start this universal development which was
to be the progressive objectivation of all that is potentially
contained in the Supreme. These Beings [the four essential
attributes of the Divine] were, in the principle of their ex-
istence: Consciousness and Light, Life, Bliss and Love, and
Truth. You can easily imagine that they had a sense of great
power, great strength, of something tremendous, for theyt h e o d ic y: natur e doe s not mak e mistakes
225
were essentially the very [divine] principles of these things.
Besides, they had full freedom of choice, for the creation
was to be Freedom itself ... As soon as they set to work they
had their own idea of how it had to be done being totally
free, they chose to do it independently. Instead of taking the
attitude of servant and instrument ... they took the attitude
of the master [of the Ego], and this mistake as I may call
it was the first cause, the essential cause of all the disorder
in the universe. As soon as there was separation for this is
the essential cause, separation as soon as there was sepa-
ration between the Supreme and what had been emanated,
Consciousness turned into inconscience, Light into dark-
ness, Love into hatred, Bliss into suffering, Life into death
and Truth into falsehood. And they proceeded with their
creations independently, in separation and disorder. ...
The creative Force [i.e. the Great Mother] which had
emanated these four Beings, essentially for the creation of
the world, saw what was happening, and turning to the Su-
preme she prayed for a remedy and a cure of the evil that
had been done. Then she was given the command to pre-
cipitate her Consciousness into this inconscience, her Love
into this suffering, and her Truth into this falsehood. And
a greater consciousness, a more total love, a more perfect
truth than what had been emanated at first, plunged, so to
say, into the horror of Matter in order to awaken in it Con-
sciousness, Love and Truth, and to begin the movement of
redemption, which was to bring the material universe back
to its supreme origin. And this is my story. 25
This is the wording of one version of the Mothers story,
which she has told or referred to on other occasions also. It
is noteworthy that it was the Great Mothers second inter-
vention which created the possibility of the manifestation
25 The Mother: Entretiens 1957-58, pp. 235-236.226
e l e v e n ta l k s
to return to its Origin instead of having to remain forever
separated from it. The divine Love which she poured into
it would be incarnated in the progressive succession of the
Avatars enabling and supporting the evolution. This Love
would also create the presence of the soul, the divine Self,
in the manifestation. Hidden in the lower evolution, it
would become consciously active in the human being, and,
once fully developed, it will give shape to the species of the
future, the spiritual superman.
When the plunge happened into the Darkness and In-
conscience of the separation, which the Mother said was an
accident, immediately something else sprang forth form
the Source which probably would not have manifested if
this accident had not taken place. If Delight had remained
Delight, conceived as Delight, and everything [of the mani-
festation] had come about in Delight and Union instead of in
division, there would never have been any need for the divine
Consciousness to plunge into the inconscience as Love. 26
This is the justification of our evolutionary universe.
The four great beings, cause and basis of the manifes-
tation, were the Lords of Falsehood, Ignorance (or Incon-
science), Suffering, and Death. Through them the Divine
plunged into its opposite, for reasons called his Lila in the
Hindu tradition, which also means that they were funda-
mentally known to himself alone. (As we have seen in the
previous section, they are still unknowable to humanity on
its evolutionary pilgrimage.)
Sri Aurobindo mentions them in his sonnet The Iron
Dictators:
I looked for Thee alone, but met my glance
The iron dreadful Four who rule our breath,
26 The Mother: Entretiens 1955, p. 478.t h e o d ic y: natur e doe s not mak e mistakes
227
Masters of falsehood, Kings of ignorance,
High sovereign Lords of suffering and death.
Whence came those formidable autarchies,
From what inconscient blind infinity ... ? 27
Numerous instances could be cited from the gnostic
tradition in which this kind of knowledge was very much
alive. The Bible too has a similar knowledge, but there the
four fallen Powers are reduced to only one, Lucifer, the
Light-Bearer. How are you fallen from heaven, day star,
son of the dawn! How are you fallen to earth, conqueror of
the nations! You said in your heart: I will ascend to heaven,
above the stars of God, I will set my throne on high ... I will
ascend upon the high clouds. ... But you are brought down
to darkness, to the depths of the pit. (Isaiah 14:12-15)
It is of prime importance to realize that the evolution,
the road back to the glory of the Origin, started from the
absolute negation, from the extreme contraries of that Ori-
gin. In some traditions and religions (Zoroastrianism, Man-
ichaeism, and even Christianity) the separation between
Positive and Negative, Light and Darkness has been seen
as permanent. In the Vedantic view, which is the basis of Sri
Aurobindo and the Mothers vision, all is one and all is the
One, so that a permanent separation or duality is impos-
sible. Behind the Mothers story one sees the Love which is
the Ananda of the Divine in everything. It is the power of
this Love, incarnated in the soul and in the Avatars, which
in the course of the ages has brought movement and Life
into the stagnant bottomless Zero at the beginning of the
slow climb upwards.
If one talks of evil and the Asuras who are its personal-
ized powers, one should remember that in the beginning
27 Sri Aurobindo: Collected Poems, p. 136.228
e l e v e n ta l k s
all was Darkness and Ignorance in the most absolute sense.
From that Inconscient the Subconscient and Matter have
emerged. The Inconscient we cannot imagine; what Mat-
ter means, science has given us a more complete idea
in its discoveries of the billions of galaxies, the fantastic
fireworks of the material universe, and the wonders in the
subatomic world; the Subconscient is the murky waters in
which our life and our mental consciousness have taken
shape and on which they are still floating. Life and Mind
are the level accelerating evolution has reached in the hu-
man being. We are the children of the evolution as concen-
trated in the workings of Mother Earth, which means that
we are carrying the cosmic past, from its very beginnings,
in us, even in our cells.
Inflicting still its habits on the cells
The phantom of a dark and evil start
Ghostlike pursues all that we dream and do. 28
It is the weight of this past in us that causes what Sri Au-
robindo has called the downward gravitation, so easy to
give in to. Yet the whole sense of the involutionary plunge,
also called the Fall, and the effort towards the recovery of
the original divinity lies in the Love and Ananda which are
redeeming all.
It was you ...
History is for the most part a horror story, with only
here and there an oasis of rationality, beauty, kindness or
love. It was not for nothing that Sri Aurobindo and the
Mother so often called Homo sapiens the human animal,
for this is what we still are. True spirituality is not only a
matter of ethereal experiences, hearing bells or hovering a
foot above the ground. Especially Sri Aurobindos Integral
28 Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, p. 140.t h e o d ic y: natur e doe s not mak e mistakes
229
Yoga has turned the arrow of the yogic aspiration around,
from exclusively upwards to also downwards, aimed at the
nether regions of our humanity, at the realms of the lower
chakras. For if the transformation of this part of Nature in
us is not possible, there is no hope that humanity and the
world would ever change.
If one is aware of this, one must also realize the price-
less value of the treasure India has discovered, kept and
guarded for humanity. Of humanitys ordeal her tradition
gives the only coherent explanation based on a vast experi-
ence, together with a certainty of the meaning of the ordeal
and its inevitable outcome in the Light. For the human con-
dition is not the doubtful result of the intentional actions
of a good God, it is God himself in action. We, humans,
are God in action, for he is everything we are, can be and
will be and have been. The plunge, the separation in the
Mothers story, was the Lila of the Divine, and therefore our
Lila, for we are that. If the Vedantic premises are correct,
then this is the logical conclusion. It is the conclusion we
find in Sri Aurobindo.
In a letter, afterwards published in The Riddle of This
World, he, the seer and knower, wrote: But still what is the
purpose and origin of the disharmony why came this divi-
sion and ego, this world of painful evolution? Why must evil
and sorrow enter into the divine Good, Bliss and Peace? It is
hard to answer to the human intelligence on its own level,
for the consciousness to which the origin of this phenome-
non belongs and to which it stands as it were automatically
justified in a supra-intellectual knowledge, is a cosmic and
not an individualized human intelligence: it sees in larger
spaces, it has another vision and cognition, other terms of
consciousness than human reason and feeling.
To the human mind one might answer that while in
itself the Infinite might be free from those perturbations,230
e l e v e n ta l k s
yet once manifestation began infinite possibility also began
and among the infinite possibilities which it is the function
of the universal manifestation to work out, the apparent ef-
fective negation with all its consequences of the Power,
Light, Peace, Bliss was very evidently one. If it is asked why
even if possible it should have been accepted, the answer
nearest to the Cosmic Truth which the human intelligence
can make is that in the relations or in the transition of the
Divine in the Oneness to the Divine in the Many, this omi-
nous possible became at a certain point an inevitable.
For once it appears it acquires for the soul descend-
ing into evolutionary manifestation an irresistible attrac-
tion which creates the inevitability an attraction which in
human terms on the terrestrial level might be interpreted
as the call of the unknown, the joy of danger and difficulty
and adventure, the will to attempt the impossible, to work
out the incalculable, the will to create the new and the un-
created with ones own self and life as the material, the
fascination of contradictories and their difficult harmoni-
zation these things translated into another supraphysi-
cal, superhuman consciousness, higher and wider than the
mental, were the temptation that led to the fall.
For in the original being of light on the verge of the
descent the one thing unknown was the depth of the abyss,
the possibilities of the Divine in the Ignorance and Incon-
science. On the other side from the Divine Oneness a vast
acquiescence, compassionate, consenting, helpful, a su-
preme knowledge that this thing must be, that having ap-
peared it must be worked out, that its appearance is in a
certain sense part of the incalculable infinite wisdom, that if
the plunge into Night was inevitable the emergence into a
new unprecedented Day was also a certitude, and that only
so could a certain manifestation of the Supreme Truth be
effected by a working out with its phenomenal oppositest h e o d ic y: natur e doe s not mak e mistakes
231
as the starting-point of the evolution, as the condition laid
down for a transforming emergence.
In this acquiescence was embraced too the will of the
great Sacrifice, the descent of the Divine itself into the In-
conscience to take up the burden of the Ignorance and its
consequences, to intervene as the Avatar and the Vibhuti
walking between the double sign of the Cross and the Vic-
tory towards the fulfilment and deliverance. A too imag-
ined rendering of the inexpressible Truth? But without im-
ages how to present to the intellect a mystery far beyond
it? It is only when one has crossed the barrier of the lim-
ited intelligence and shared in the cosmic experience and
the knowledge which sees things from identity that the
supreme realities which lie behind these images images
corresponding to the terrestrial fact assume their divine
forms and are felt as simple, natural, implied in the essence
of things. It is by entering into that greater consciousness
alone that one can grasp the inevitability of its self-creation
and purpose. 29
Nirodbaran, then the Ashram doctor, wrote a daily re-
port to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo about the condition of
the sadhaks under his care. It was Sri Aurobindo who wrote
the answers about what Nirodbaran had to do in his dispen-
sary or at the local hospital, and who also answered the doc-
tors more personal queries concerning his sadhana. These
answers developed into a treasure of wisdom and simplic-
ity and humor. For because of a reason Sri Aurobindo did
not disclose Let it have no name, he wrote he suddenly
gave expression to the humorous side in him which other-
wise had to be kept hidden for fear of misunderstanding.
In this Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, unique in the
spiritual literature, there is a page where Nirodbaran vented
29 Sri Aurobindo: Letters on Yoga, pp. 28-29.232
e l e v e n ta l k s
one of his bouts of yogic depression and doubt about the
meaning of it all. Sri Aurobindo answered him: In the be-
ginning it was you (not the human you which is now com-
plaining but the central being) who accepted or even invited
the adventure of the Ignorance. Sorrow and struggle are a
necessary consequence of the plunge into the Inconscience
and the evolutionary emergence out of it. The explanation
is that it had an object, the eventual play of the Divine Con-
sciousness and Ananda not in its initial transcendence but
under conditions for which the plunge into the Inconscience
was necessary. It is fundamentally a cosmic problem and
can be understood only from the cosmic consciousness. If
you want a solution which will be agreeable to the human
mind and feelings, I am afraid there is none. No doubt, if hu-
man beings had made the universe, they would have done
much better, but they were not there to be consulted when
they were made. Only your central being was there. 30
This answer contains in a nutshell, and in the most lim-
pid language, much of what has been considered in this
talk. Sri Aurobindo wrote the same in the mantric lines of
Savitri:
O mortal who complainst of death and fate,
Accuse none of the harms thyself hast called;
This troubled world thou hast chosen for thy home,
Thou art thyself the author of thy pain.
Once in the immortal boundlessness of Self,
In a vast of Truth and Consciousness and Light
The soul looked out from its felicity.
It felt the Spirits interminable bliss,
It knew itself deathless, timeless, spaceless, one,
It saw the Eternal, lived in the Infinite.
Then, curious of a shadow thrown by Truth,
30 Nirodbaran: Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, p. 277.t h e o d ic y: natur e doe s not mak e mistakes
233
It strained towards some otherness of self,
It was drawn to an unknown Face peering through night ... 31
And it took the plunge into the abyss, thrilled by the
adventure of consciousness that would be the effort of the
return to the Origin, of the Self-rediscovery. This plunge
it could take because it was That possessing the powers
of That. And the effort of the return it could envisage be-
cause one of those powers was Ananda, which assured that
it would be equal to the epic repetition of suffering, death
and rebirth, many times and in many ways. This quest for
the true Graal is the quest of the Divine for himself, which
... None could bear but for his strength within,
Yet none would leave because of his delight. 32
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