Question: I was wondering if there is a spiritual reason why earth is suffering from so many disasters at this time.²⁵⁷

Sri Chinmoy: Disasters do take place occasionally. From the spiritual point of view, we have to take everything as an experience. In God’s ultimate Vision, each human being will eventually have boundless perfection and infinite satisfaction. But God works in ways beyond our comprehension. Human beings do not know what God’s ultimate Vision is. Here on the physical plane somebody will die and we will be sad; but on the inner plane perhaps God sees that dying at this time will expedite that soul’s progress. So the best way is to take so-called disasters as an experience that God is giving to the individuals who are immediately involved and to those who are observing the situation.

Again, we have to know that wrong forces can operate in and through the earth planet because earth is not perfect. Some things God initiates and inspires, some things He approves of and some things He just accepts or tolerates. When we see earthquakes, floods or famine, we have to know that these are things God is just tolerating. If some wrong forces destroy a group of people or destroy some places, God is just tolerating it. Again, there is a higher purpose to these things. Today God tolerates this suffering, but tomorrow, inside the persons who have suffered, God’s deep Compassion will flow, and in some way He will compensate. But that compensation we will not see with our human eyes; it has to be seen with our aspiring consciousness.

We have to know that the catastrophes and disasters which make us feel that the downfall of the human race is approaching are only what we are seeing in the outer world. Because we live on the physical plane, we notice whatever is happening there. But catastrophes can take place on the inner plane also. The undivine forces, the hostile forces, can also operate on the inner plane.

Look at the conflict between faith and doubt. If doubt destroys our faith, then on the inner plane it is like the explosion of an atom bomb.