In Hinduism, ignorance-not the devil-is the root of evil. Only self-conscious entitles can be evil,deliberately choosing to do harm to others or to themselves. When a human being, or some other fully conscious entity, fails to recognize that everything is interconnected, that we are all one, that harming another one is literally harming oneself, then that person is acting out of ignorance of the underlying universal reality.
What Christians called evil is called avidya in Sanskrit, which means "lack of knowledge". In mystical states, beginning-level saints first experience the literal unity of all being. They come out of the experience transformed. As Anasuya Devi, the late housewife saint of Jillellamudi, expressed after she became mystically identified with the Mother of the Universe, " I am not anything that you are not. It doesn't appear to me that I am greater than you. The Goddess doesn't exist separately anywhere. You are all the Goddess", Acting from this living realization of primal unity, the saints act for the welfare of all creation. Ignorance has been removed. The choice to commit evil is no longer available in the living light of spirit.
So, in a sense, you could say that God is the ultimate source of evil, because God granted us the free choice between wholesome and unhelpful acts. But God also set the law karma into place, ensuring that all of us eventually learn our lesson ! In Hindu cosmology, the universe is really a universe for souls, and overcoming the evil in ourselves, and learning to deal effectively yet compassionately with the evil in others, is a graduate-level course.
No comments:
Post a Comment