Sachchidananda 'The Life Divine' Book I,Ch.9, 10, 11, 12 (The Mother Insitute of Research - MIRA) - Track 1202

The other way of protecting God is to say is that although God is the creator of this world any created this beautiful world but individuals when they do some evil or wrong action then God being just he intervenes and meets out justice, for evil actions he inflicts suffering and for good actions he is rewarding with lollipops all kinds of happiness in the world. In other words by bringing in the law of karma it is argued that the law of karma is responsible for suffering, evil and not God; God is only a deity who stands above and depending upon the actions of man God meets out justice and reverse punishment or reward of some kind of happiness inside these are the two basic arguments which have been put forward to protect God from the reproach that he is the creator of evil in this world. Actually both the arguments are in a sense one lenient argument man's action is also because of his freedom so you might say that all actions which are done by man are out of freedom and freedom is given by God and freedom is a good thing therefore God is not responsible for evil and suffering only man is responsible for it, against these two propositions freedom of man and karma an argument is possible the argument is a God gave freedom to man and knew that this freedom can be misused and it'll be misused why should God punish anybody is God knows that freedom implies a misuse of it knowing well he produced freedom having done it why should the punish anybody therefore this argument is not satisfying that it is man who is responsible for evil and suffering second argument is that if God knew that such a misused as possible then why did he give this kind of freedom at all it was really good knowing very well that it can be misused he should have created such a world in which freedom cannot be misused that means he is not omnipotent if he was omnipotent he would have given freedom and yet created a condition in which it can't be misused, why could he not create that kind the world if he was really omnipotent or if you say that it is not because God gave freedom but human beings are right from the beginning ignorant and they are having karma and they are doing some kind of action and then whatever evil exists in the world as a result automatic result of their actions is not that is a God is giving punishment or awards automatic result in which case the question is when did the man start having the first action and this is where the problem is tangled in such a way that you don't get a clear answer one answer is that ignorance is anadi it is beginningless and therefore it is not as if it is created by him or created by somebody else it is there already but if you say that ignorance is permanent and beginningless then you given up the hypothesis that there is only one reality and that reality Satchitananda; now you're saying that there are two realities one is Satchitananda the and other is ignorance and both our original that means there is a basic dualism but dualism is already dealt with in the earlier chapter where we have seen that if they are two which are existing both exist therefore existence must be common of ultimate reality must be one. So dualism has already been rejected in chapter number nine so we come back to say that there must be only one reality if there's only one reality and still if there is karma and karma must have started only from that reality and nowhere else28:12 this is where the problem is if there is only one reality and no other, if that reality is Satchitananda than this world it is the manifestation of that reality must be full of Satchitananda why there is contrary phenomena at all. Faced with this problem sometimes it is argued there is no God at all all these problems arise if you admit God but supposing there is no God at all and you can simply say this world is what it is as you find it this is how it is but having found yourself in this world you are capable of arriving at a new condition of existence with it is a complete peace and harmony that is the Buddhist position. Buddhist position says that there is no God at all. The world is what it is but it is possible to arrive at a situation where you will have nirvana and in Nirvana you find there is nothing. It is me Nihil, now if that is the position you take then the problem is not resolved it'll only be a kind of a balm being given to the human beings for suffering and you're told that you can come out of it but the basic question as to why the world should be what it is and if ultimately there is nothing then how come nothing this kind of world arise from nothing only nothing would have come about. Out of nothing how this chaos so that also is not the solution this is all that it said last time now we move forward.

Now to deal with the problem more properly we must understand the nature of suffering and nature of evil. We must keep this premise that it started with that reality is Satchitananda and there is no other reality then Satchitananda and without abandoning that position we have to resolve the problem of the rise of evil and suffering in this world because all other alternatives are found to be inadequate they are not sustainable sure to find a solution to this problem we must understand what is the nature of suffering and what is the nature of evil, there is a view which says that actually this world has no evil at all it cuts the root of the problem altogether by saying there is no evil in this world at all suffering there may but evil there is no such thing as evil therefore you don't have the problem of reconciling evil with God.