At the heart of Haiti’s humanitarian crisis is an age old question for many religious people – how can God allow such terrible things to happen? Philosopher David Bain examines the arguments.
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January 20th, 2010 Entry Filed under: In The News
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1. bh Matyi | February 1st, 2010 at 5:28 am
Whereas I found the BBC article very interesting and, given the limitations of space, a thorough, survey of extant opinions, I was missing the answer to the question in the title. One can say that the answer is not available, but yes, the answer is out there, if we do not deliberately restrict our enquiries to Western philosophical tradition.
As Srila Sivarama Swami said in his podcast, a complete and detailed answer can be found in the ancient Vedic philosophy of India. The foundation of this knowledge is that the living being is eternal spirit soul and is not identical with the body of the day he finds him/herself in. We also need to consider that the original home of the spirit soul is in the spiritual world and not this material one. The soul departed from the spiritual world by misusing his free will, wishing to enjoy independently from God. This material world was created as a reformatory institution for renegade souls in which God is trying to make us gradually understand that we had better go back to Him (not easy).
Another important thing to know that in this material world the spirit soul, whose original qualities are: sat, cit, ananda (eternal, full of knowledge, blissful) becomes miserable – asat, acit, nirananda (mortal, ignorant and unhappy) because of the effect of the material energy on the soul. Because of his (and, yes, her, but let us leave PC outside) ignorance, he continually commits sinful acts which have a REACTION – this is called karma. Given that the reaction of the evil deeds does not come to fruition within one lifetime, the background of a serious mishap happening to the living being can only be understood if we take into account the transmigration of the soul, i.e. that the suffering that hit the Haitian babies because of the earthquake was the reaction of a sinful act committed, maybe, several lifetimes ago.
There are other useful things to know about this correctionary system devised by God and the knowledge is freely available, but suffice it to say that the system is neither unfair nor is it revengeful. It is what a prison should be in a benevolent, liberal state: correcting the individual with more or, sometimes, less gentle, means.
Some comments on the points in the article.
“Pat Robertson… has suggested Haiti has been cursed ever since the population swore a pact with the Devil to gain their freedom from the French at the beginning of the 19th Century.”
We must understand that the descendants of 19th Century Haitians have nothing to do with their ancestors. Ancestry is a physical relationship, whereas the spirit soul will get a body according to his karma at the time of changing bodies (death followed by a new gestation). By living a slave’s life in 18th and early 19th Century Haiti, the reactions of the deeds calling for this reaction have probably been extinguished and those souls are presently in completely different bodies (not necessarily human). The present inhabitants of Haiti may have come from anywhere in this universe, the common trait of them is that their previous deeds call for similar suffering. (By the way, the understanding of this distinction between the body and the soul has momentous implications on such concepts as race, nation, kinship, family; religion, citizenship etc.)He writes: “To make progress, we might distinguish two kinds of evil:
* the awful things people do, such as murder, and
* the awful things that just happen, such as earthquake”Actually, according to the Vedic science, we should distinguish three kinds: suffering caused by our own body (including our mind), that caused by other living beings (”thy neighbour”, including mosquitoes and germs), and that caused by demigods, to which he refers to as “things that just happen”, like earthquakes, tsunami, flood etc. Whatever the classification, however, NO suffering is causeless.
Although it is not topical in view of the Haiti disaster, I should mention for completeness’s sake that materially motivated pious deeds (for example, the very commendable relief efforts done in Haiti these days) also have a reaction, one which is agreeable — lottery win, taking birth in a rich family, beautiful or intelligent body etc. However, the common trait is that, just as once a bad deed has received its punishment, the karma is extinguished; similarly, once you have enjoyed the reaction of your pious deed, you fall back from your pleasant position.
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