WHY ALL THE MISERY?
Probably the argument most commonly raised against the existence of a divine Being is the state of the world. If He’s a perfect being of perfect love, in complete control of everything, how come there’s so much suffering? It’s a good question, and the absence of any satisfying answer has led many down the path of unbelief. That’s understandable.
It’s amazing how adept we human beings are at creating misery for ourselves and other creatures. True, there are many selfless and caring people out there who do their best to make the world a better place. Yet there are many others, too, who use their ‘superior’ human intelligence not to alleviate suffering, but to make it worse. The variety of ways we have invented for creating misery is remarkable for its ingenuity. Wars, feuds, jealousies, family disharmonies, competition of every kind; torture, rape, pillage; abuse, bullying, unkindness, prejudice; pollution, filth, and ugliness of every kind. The list sounds like it came from some hellfire preacher of eternal damnation, intent on exposing every last scrap of human iniquity. Except that it goes on around us all the time.
And as if that wasn’t enough, we have to contend with disease, accidents, earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, tidal waves, hurricanes, blizzards, avalanches, climate change, and a whole lot more. Even the happiest and most caring of people can suddenly find themselves deep in the mire for no apparent reason.
And it’s not just human beings who suffer. All life suffers. Most life forms can only sustain themselves by killing other life forms. Simply staying alive is the primary aspiration of every living creature; yet all are destined to die, and very few die of old age. Fear, pain, hunger, and the danger of being eaten by someone else are constant threats. Most creatures compete with each other simply for survival, often with members of their own species. And human beings kill (and eat) them all.
The primary architect of all this mayhem is the mind. Fair enough. But that doesn’t answer why the One Being did things in the way He did. Why should He have set up a system that results in so much suffering in the first place? Couldn’t He have achieved His objective in some other way?
There is little likelihood of a rational human answer to the conundrum, for we are not dealing with a Being who thinks like us, or even thinks at all. We must presume that His wisdom, intelligence and consciousness are far beyond the ability of most of us to grasp. But let’s pretend for a moment that we can look at things from His perspective. Humanly speaking.
He is all love, all consciousness, all intelligence. He is all one, and all alone. A hidden treasure known only to Himself. But love desires to share. Love needs someone to love. Therefore, the urge arose to create beings who can share in all the love He has. We’ve mentioned this before.
Through His Word, His Music, His divine Power, He has created a vast creation, level upon level of worlds within the orbit of His own great Being. To achieve this, He has created the mind to perpetuate the illusion of separation – to turn His oneness into an apparent multiplicity, creating relationships (that we call cause and effect) between the hiddenly connected but seemingly separate parts.
He creates coverings – bodies and individual minds – out of the substance of each realm in which the little beings find themselves. And each being starts to consider itself separate.
The realms of His creation are stepped-down degrees of His own supreme consciousness or being. In most of these realms, the little beings float around in the bliss of His love and being. Worship of the Divine is the most natural thing in their existence, for they are totally aware of their Origin. Though separate, they remain consciously connected to Him. They don’t have to think about it. It is utterly natural to them. They are blissfully happy in their existence, having no desire to return to their original home. They are spiritual beings dwelling in the realms of spirit.
But far away, on the outskirts of His creation (so to speak), the One Being has created a different scenario. His masterpiece, perhaps. Here the separation from Himself is intensified by the soul’s association with a deeply individualistic mind and the coverings of a material body. So dense are these coverings that the souls are no longer aware of the divine and loving presence that dwells within them, supporting, surrounding, and sustaining their existence. They feel that they are on their own, fighting a losing battle for temporary survival of their bodies and identities. Like a lamp that has been shrouded in many layers of dense, dark cloth, it seems as if the light has been extinguished.
We are talking of the physical universe, of course, a tiny part of the entire creation. A hellish place, actually, if the truth be told, though it is also full of beauty if perceived aright, for He is everywhere, and He is Beauty. And here the One Being has devised His highest purpose. Elsewhere in creation, all the little beings are happy, having no desire to return to Him. But here, the suffering ultimately becomes so intense that the little beings cry out, often unconsciously, for help, for mercy, for anything to alleviate the pain.
The source of all this anguish lies in the depth of the apparent separation. Yet it may take many lifetimes for a little being to relinquish enough of its self-interested focus on its own material life to start to wonder if there is more to life than the daily grind. And here, perhaps, lies the hidden purpose of the One Being. For when a little being starts to seek answers to the meaning of its life, it is actually responding to the presence of the One within who gives it its existence.
And somehow, by divine design, so the sages say, having experienced the extremity of separation qualifies the little being to travel the entire return journey to its Source. To set out upon the journey home, and realize its essential oneness with the Divine.
And this can only happen to a human being. It seems there is a mystery in the way in which human beings are put together. The “best of forms”, the “image of God”, the “divine human body” – these are some of the epithets given to the human form by the sages who seem to know about these things. In this form – not in the form of any lower physical creature, nor as an angel or as some other being dwelling in a higher heavenly realm – a little being can begin and even complete the return journey to its Source.
The One Being has made a creation in which to experience His own love. “He worships Himself through us.” “I was a hidden treasure, and I wanted to be known, so I created the world.”
Separation from our Source, which is the origin of suffering and misery, is a sharp stone in our shoe. Sooner or later it makes us stoop to seek out the source of the irritation, and remove it. And so we return. This is the story of His purpose and design.
And does the story satisfy? Well, there must be some truth reflected in it or the sages would not have mentioned it. But like the man who fell into a well, we can either go on demanding: Who built the well? How deep is it? What is the manner of its construction? How come we fell into it in the first place? Will we fall into it again? Or we can take the help of one who offers to lift us out, and then see what the situation looks like.
But even while we are stuck down the well, in this far-off corner of creation, struggling to make some sense of it all, we have not been abandoned. The Divine is always with us. In fact, in reality, there is no far-off corner. He is always there, everywhere. And that’s a reason for the greatest joy, wherever we may be.