Chance and Divine Order

We tend to interpret events from our own ego-standpoint as to whether they are “good” or “bad” without reflecting on or considering how they relate to a larger picture and longer perspective. This means we judge circumstances as if they occur by ‘chance’ and we evaluate these things with the concepts of “good luck” and “bad luck”. All of this, however, is both inaccurate and extremely misleading.

When we shift away from a purely ego-centric standpoint, we begin to see that events do not necessarily happen because of their impact on a specific individual, but rather, we are placed to experience events that have more general impacts and energetic trajectories and impetus. While we are under the primary impetus of the mental, vital and physical planes of evolution, these tend to create waves and counter-waves, confusion, chaos and a lack of general harmony. As higher powers intervene, such as would occur with a shift to the divine-standpoint away from the ego-standpoint, we see what may be called a ‘divine order’ at work that uses all the temporary expressions that look like disharmony at our level and moves it towards a greater harmony as the higher insight and understanding gain a more direct power of expression and action.

Sometimes, something we evaluate as “good luck” is really a bad thing for our evolutionary progress. For instance, someone gets a million dollar inheritance. If they treat it properly, it may be a positive influence in their lives; but if they then determine to quit their jobs, change their lifestyle to one of indulgence and luxury, and otherwise make their lives about enjoyment rather than service, they may soon find that they are suffering more intensely than before they received that inheritance. In fact, reviews of results of massive short-term gain of wealth among lottery winners, celebrities or sports stars, tend to bear this out, and in many cases, they wind up poor and struggling after a brief run of spending beyond their normal means.

Chance is essentially an interpretation from the narrow perspective of the individual because it does not see the larger order and process of the universal creation and its manifestation. If one shifts the viewpoint outside of the ego-standpoint to the divine standpoint, there is no longer a question of ‘chance’ and one can no longer interpret events as “good” or “bad” luck. Chance in that sense is disorderly because there is a play of forces that intervene in the evolutionary process over time. It represents the operation of ‘free will’ within the larger context of a divine harmony and order.

The Mother notes in her Questions and Answers 1929-31: “Chance can only be the opposite of order and harmony. There is only one true harmony and that is the supramental — the reign of Truth, the expression of the Divine Law. In the Supermind, therefore, chance has no place. But in the lower Nature, the supreme Truth is obscured: hence there is an absence of that divine unity of purpose and action which alone can constitute order. Lacking this unity, the domain of the lower Nature is governed by what we may call chance — that is to say, it is a field in which various conflicting forces intermix, having no single definite aim.”

A disciple asks: “If chance is the expression of disorder in the lower worlds, still there are ‘happy’ chances which are not necessarily the expression of a disorder, aren’t there?”

The Mother replies: “Happy for whom? For generally in this world as we see it, what is happy for one is unhappy for another; what is happy in one case is unhappy in another, and that too is an expression of disorder. I don’t say that necessarily it is a chance occurrence which makes you unhappy. I say that it does not correspond to the order of truths, which is very different. One may be very happy in the midst of disorder! There are many who are perfectly satisfied with their disorder and would not like to change it.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.8 Life — A Mass of Vibrations, pp. 177-178