Question: How does God let catastrophes take place?

Sri Chinmoy: Suppose our near and dear ones have died. It is a real catastrophe for us. But in God's Eye, it is only an experience that He is having in and through us. God is infinite and inside Him this particular experience is taking place.

Before the battle, Arjuna did not want to fight against his cousins and other relatives. You have read this in the Gita, India's bible. Arjuna said, "How can I do this?" But Sri Krishna showed Arjuna his Universal Form and said, "Look, enter into my Universal Consciousness!" Sri Krishna showed Arjuna that in his Universal Consciousness, Arjuna's enemies were already killed. He said, "It is all done. Arjuna, you just become the instrument."

We see that a disaster has taken place and we ask, "Why is God so unkind? Why did He allow this to take place if He is all Love?" But if we enter into His Will, if we have the capacity to identify ourselves with the Inner Pilot, then we will see that there is a reason. If we live in the soul, we will see that everything that happens here on earth has some meaning, because God does not do anything contrary to His own ultimate Fulfilment. With our human eyes we see unbearable pain and sorrow; the whole world is full of suffering. But when we pray and meditate, when we go deep within, we see that there is no such thing as suffering or joy. It is all the operation of God's Will. When this Will is in operation, sometimes we call it suffering and sometimes we call it joy, or we use some other term. A spiritual person tries to identify himself with the experience that God Himself is having, and not with what is taking place in the outer manifestation. If we identify ourselves with the outer manifestation, we will lose all faith in ourselves, in God and in the creation. There will be every possibility for our mind to mislead and misguide us.

So, in our spiritual life, we try to live in the soul. In the soul there is Light. When we become part and parcel of this Light, we become one with God's Universal Will. There we will see that it is God who is the Knower, the Known and also the Knowledge. God is the Experience, God is the Experiencer and God is the One who is constantly offering the Experience to us.

From:Sri Chinmoy,God and the Cosmic Game, Agni Press, 1977
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/gcg