Chance and Divine Order
reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.8 Life — A Mass of Vibrations, pp. 177-178 This episode is also available as a blog post at https://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com/2024/08/06/chance-and-divine-order/
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0:01 We tend to interpret events from our own ego standpoint as to whether they are good or bad, without reflecting on or considering how they relate to a larger picture and longer perspective. This means we judge circumstances as if they occur by chance, and we evaluate these things with the concepts of good luck and bad luck. All of this, however, is both inaccurate and extremely misleading. When we shift away from a purely egocentric standpoint, we begin to see that events do not necessarily happen because of their impact on a specific individual, but rather we are placed to experience events that have more general impacts and energetic trajectories and impetus. While we are under the primary impetus of the mental, vital and physical planes of evolution, these tend to create waves and counter waves, confusion, chaos and a lack of general harmony. As higher powers intervene, such as would occur with a shift to the divine standpoint away from the ego standpoint, we see what may be called a divine order at work that uses all the temporary expressions that look like disharmony at our level and moves it towards a greater harmony as the higher insight and understanding gain a more
1:32 direct power of expression and action. Sometimes something we evaluate as good luck is really a bad thing for our evolutionary progress. For instance, someone gets $1,000,000 inheritance. If they treated properly, it may be a positive influence in their lives. But if they then determined to quit their jobs, change their lifestyle to one of indulgence and luxury, and otherwise make their lives about enjoyment rather than service, they may soon find that they are suffering more intensely than before they received that inheritance. In fact.
2:14 Reviews of results of massive short term gain of wealth among lottery winners, celebrities or sports stars tend to bear this out, and in many cases they wind up poor and struggling after a brief run of spending beyond their normal means. Chance is essentially an interpretation from the narrow perspective of the individual because it does not see the larger order and process of the universal creation and its manifestation. If one shifts the viewpoint outside of the ego standpoint to the divine standpoint, there is no longer a question of chance and one can no longer interpret events as good or bad luck. Chance in that sense is disorderly because we there is a play of forces that intervene in the evolutionary process over time.
3:12 It represents the operation of free will within the larger context of a divine harmony and order. The Mother notes in her questions and Answers 1929 to 31 quote. Chance can only be the opposite of order and harmony. There's only one true harmony and that is the Super mental, the reign of truth, the expression of the Divine Law in the Super mind. Therefore, chance has no place but in the lower nature the supreme Truth is obscured, and hence there is an absence of that divine unity of purpose and action which alone can constitute order. Lacking this unity, the domain of the lower nature is governed by what we may call chance.
4:00 That is to say, it is a field in which various conflicting forces intermix, having no single definite aim. End Quote. A disciple asks if chance is the expression of disorder in the lower worlds. Still there are happy chances which are not necessarily the expression of a disorder, aren't there? The mother replies quote happy for whom? For generally, in this world as we see it, what is happy for one is unhappy for another. What is happy in one case is unhappy in another, and that too is an expression of disorder.
4:41 I don't say that necessarily it is a chance occurrence which makes you unhappy. I say that it does not correspond to the order of truths, which is very different. One may be very happy in the midst of disorder. There are many who are perfectly satisfied with their disorder and would not like to change it. End Quote Reference Srioro Bindu and the Mother. The hidden forces of life. Chapter Eight. Life a Mass of Vibrations, pages 177 to 178.
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