FREE WILL AND EVIL
I posted this segment from Adi Da once before. It talks to
the issues relative to the notions of:
-- the inherent nature of good and evil
-- the supposed role of the right use of free will
(4) The difficulty with the Creator-God conception is that it identifies God with ultimate causation and thus makes God inherently responsible for the subsequent causation of all effects. And if God is responsible for all effects, then God is clearly a very powerful but also terrible Deity-since manifest existence tends to work equally for and against all creatures.
(5) Therefore, the Creator-God idea is commonly coupled with the idea of God as Good (and thus both opposite and opposed to Evil). If the Creator-God is conceived to be Good (or always working to positively create, protect, nourish, rightly and pleasurably fulfill, and ultimately preserve all of Nature and all creatures), then the ego is free of the emotional double-bind and the anger and despair that would seem to be justified if God is simply the responsible Creator of everything (good, evil, bad, or in between). Therefore, conventional theology, most especially as it has tended to develop under the influence of the Semitic religions of the Middle East, is founded on the ideas of God as Creator and God as Good (or Good Will).
(6) But if God is the all-powerful Creator (without whom not anything has been made), then how did so much obviously negative or evil motion and effect come into existence? The usual answer is generally organized around one or another mythological story in which powerful creatures (or one powerful creature, such as the Devil, now regarded to personify Evil) entered (on the basis of free will), into a pattern of "sin," or disobedience and conflict with God, which resulted in separation from God and a descent or fall into material consciousness, and so forth. Such mythologies are structured in terms of a hierarchical view of Nature, with various planes descending from the Heaven of God. Religion thus becomes a method of return to God.
(7) Exoteric religion is generally based on an appeal to belief, social morality, and magical prayer or worship. The return to God is basically conceived in terms of this world and, therefore, exoteric or terrestrial religion is actually a process in which God returns to the ego and to this world (rather than vice versa), and it is believed that God will eventually reclaim mankind and the total world from the forces of Evil. But exoteric religion is an outer cult, intended for grosser egos and for mass consumption (or the culture of the first three stages of life). The ultimate form of conventional religion is in the esoteric or inner and sacred cult, which is a mystical society, open only to those chosen for initiation (and thus growth or evolution into the fourth and fifth stages of life). Esoteric religion is a process of cosmic mysticism, or the method of return to God by ascending as mind (or disembodied soul), back through the route of the original fall into matter and Evil, until the Heaven or Eternal Abode of God is reached again. The esoteric religious process goes beyond the conventions of exoteric religion to develop the psycho-physical mechanics of mystical flight and return to God via the hierarchical structures of the nervous system (ascending from the plane of Evil, or the Devil, or the "flesh," at the bodily base of the nervous system, to the plane of the Good, or God, or the Heavenly Abode, at or above the brain, via the "magic carpet" of the life-force in the nervous system).
(8) Thus, the idea of the Creator-God leads to the idea that God is Good (or the Good Will), which leads to the idea that creatures have free will, which then accounts for the appearance of sin, suffering, evil, and loss of God-consciousness. And conventional religion then becomes the means (through structures of belief, sacramental worship, mystical prayer, yogic or shamanistic ascent, and so forth) for the re-exercise of creaturely free will in the direction of God, Good, the triumph over Evil and death in this world, and the ascent from material form and consciousness to spiritual, heavenly, or Godly form and consciousness.
(9) All the popular and mystical religious and spiritual traditions of mankind tend to be associated with this chain of conceptions (or the characteristic ideas of the first five stages of life). It is only in the sixth and seventh stage traditions that these ideas begin to give way to different conceptions. It is only in the sixth stage of life that the egoic basis of the first five stages of life is penetrated. And it is only in the seventh stage of life that the ego is altogether transcended in the Real Divine.
Namaste!
Jim |
