Only if we understand the nature of evil, will we be able to eradicate it by our own efforts, says Rajyogi Brahmakumar Nikunj
Each of us has a vision of good and evil and based on our understanding about these two forces, we all lead our lives. The fight between good and evil is an age old thing that we all have been hearing and experiencing ourselves in day to day life. However our understanding about good would remain incomplete unless we solve the mystery behind existence of evil.
Yes! because if we believe that Almighty Supreme is benevolent, knowledgeful and most powerful, then, it is natural to ask, how did evil enter into the worldIJ Who is responsible for sin and the resultant sufferingIJ According to some ancient philosophers, evil was present since the very beginning of the world cycle or even before the world came into existence. If we accept this view, then it would mean that Amighty is limited by the eternal presence of evil. It would also imply that the Supreme power cannot or does not eradicate evil.
This limitation is incompatible with the concept of God’s Supremacy or compassionate Almighty nature and would, nonetheless, be unrelishable in the result, even to those who advocate the aforesaid theory of the eternal presence of evil. Moreover, none would think that there is any good in praying to an Almighty who cannot exterminate evil for a considerable length of time or who is incapable of bestowing deliverance to the world from evil and its tentacles. In order to evade these kind of difficulties, some philosophers take the stand that God Himself created evil.
But, this theory also does not solve the riddle as it will again face a spate of equally perplexing questions which it cannot adequately explain. like, it does not answer why at all God, the Holiest Being, created evil. If God is the Creator of Evil, one may ask: “How can He then be the Saviour, the Protector or the loveful and Merciful FatherIJ” Or, “Why should one offer prayers to invoke God if one knows that He is the very source of evil and the resultant troubles and is pitiless and the One who, perhaps, takes pleasure in man’s woesIJ”
The question that arises here is that why should Almighty take it upon Himself to create evil and accept the onus of making man fight the evil forceIJ Moreover, everyone of us can see that, in this vast universe, only very few people really improve in their conflict with evil while a great many slide down rather dangerously along the path of evil. So, the belief that God created evil, does not lend any mental satisfaction to man.
After getting confused and jumbled by different views on evil, one really gets disgruntled and haplessly seeks the right answer from Almighty and as a loveful Father to his beloved children He too reveals the truth. He says that evil exists at the material, biological, intellectual and spiritual levels. At the material level, it exists as evil traits, at mental level it is present as perverted understanding and it is there at moral and spiritual levels as distortion of Truth, as ignorance of the self, as debasement of values and as vices.
But, the fact is that He has not created this. He created man holy in His own image. That's why human soul is, in its original nature, pure and has the quality of love and peace. However, in course of time, man, who is imperfect, became body-conscious, forgetting his real self, and thus his quality of love got perverted into sex, greed, gluttony and attachment and it brought in its wake, jealousy, hatred, anger and pride.
Thus, evil is of man’s own creation and it entered the world not at God’s bidding but as perverted form of man’s love, and as man’s forgetfulness of the self, or as his sense of identification with his body. Hence, if we understand the nature of evil, we will be able to eradicate it by our own efforts, aided by Almighty Supreme who is perfectly-Holy. So, lets remain in consciousness of our original nature — of a soul and get liberated from evil.