Ethics and the Universe Lights on Life

"The roots of heaven are of great emptiness, for in emptiness there is energy, incalculable, vast and profound." --Krishnamurti to Himself, by J. Krishnamurti

Writing in his book, Lights on Life Problems, Sri Aurobindo and Kisher Gandhi say,"the universe is not solely an ethical proposition, a problem of the antinomy [a contradiction or opposition] of the good and the evil; the Spirit of the universe can in no way be imagined as a rigid moralist concerned with only making all things obey the law of moral good, or a stream of tendency towards righteousness attempting hitherto with only a very poor success, to prevail and rule, or a sterner Justicer[sic] rewarding and punishing creatures in a world he has made, or has suffered to be full of suffering, wickedness and evil. 
The Universal Will evidently has many other and more supple modes than that, an infinity of interests, many other elements of its being to manifest, many lines to follow and many laws and purposes to pursue."
 
The law of the world is not this alone: that good brings good and evil brings evil; nor is its key, the ethical-hedonistic rule that our moral good brings us happiness and success, and that our moral evil brings to us sorrow and misfortune. 
There is a rule of right in the world, but it is the right of the truth of Nature and of the truth of the Spirit, and that is a vast and various rule which takes many forms that have to be understood and accepted before we can reach either its highest or its integral principle."

Many of us have these experiences in our lifetime. We, by chance encounter, perhaps with the police, are arrested unjustly, called out by others unfairly, lied to or about; while we maintain a stance in justice and truth, we are not rewarded. 
Rather, we suffer as did Mahatma Gandhi in calling attention to injustice in India, as do truth minded individuals protesting against any form of violence or destruction which can be imagined. Against the status quo, the faithful are castigated, humiliated, reviled, objects of malicious gossip.

Clearly as Aurobindo and Gandhi write, good doesn't always beget good. Just as often, at least initially, good begets evil--it stirs it up and it may be a long standing evil such as racism, slavery, war or any other thing against matters of human and social justice. 
And yet what is the response? In the end, as M. Gandhi demonstrated in India, where there is peace there is justice; where there is justice, there is faith; where there is faith, there is love. In the end then, finally, if we do love one another, we must find the way to love through faith, through peace and justice. Trust now becomes the issue.

Moral Return and the Problem of Good and Evil

"On the mixed egoism of human nature there can be no safe or positive reliance... " --Sri Aurobindo writing about good and evil

The problems of human life are myriad, but the of the most persistent and perplexing of difficulties lies with the perception and response to the nature of good and evil. It is to oversimplify the issue by dividing the world into two camps, the good and the evil. In maturity we see that bad things do happen to "good" people. But how, and why? What type of response may we mount in the face such a situation?

The idea of moral returns supposes that like begets like; that by positive intention, or positive self talk, one may garner positive rewards. This is thought by others to be an egocentric philosophy, not borne out by everyday experiences. And while there exists in the intellectual marketplace many such advocates of these types of ideas, there are the others such as Sri Aurobindo who examines the issue more closely, writing a part in the book, Lights on Life's Problems by Kishner Ghandi.

The rule of moral returns, or more commonly called the 'golden rule' is pervasive in human philosophical systems, especially those dealing with ethical systems, and ideas of faith and belief.

Aurobindo writes, "The rule is true to a certain  extent... but it is not true all the way and all the time. It is evident enough that hatred, violence, injustice are likely to create an answering hatred, violence and injustice... and I can only indulge those propensities with impunity if I am sufficiently powerful enough and prudent enough to provide against their natural reactions. It is true also that by doing good and kindness I create a certain good will in others... but this good and evil are both of them movements of the ego, and on the mixed egoism of human nature there can be no safe or positive reliance. An egoistic, selfish strength, if it knows what to do and where to stop... if it is strong and skillful, cunning, fraud, many kinds of evil, do actually pay in man's dealing with man hardly less than in the animal's with the animal, and on the other hand the doer of good... finds himself as often as not disappointed." paraphrased

Why? asks Aurobindo: "It is because the weakness of human nature worships the power that tramples on it...return[s] to every kind of strong imposition, belief" crouching and fawning admiration, flattery of self and others, even in moments of hatred and terror, possesses a singular and unreasoning loyalty to me, myself and I. "And its disloyalties too are as unreasoning, or light and fickle; it takes just reasoning and beneficence as its right, and forgets or cares not to pay." paraphrased

"Even', says Aurobindo, 'Christ on the cross or Socrates drinking his potion of hemlock are not very clear evidence for any optimistic notion of a law of moral return in the world of human nature. Actually in the cosmic dispensation [Aurobindo thinks] "evil comes out of good and good comes out of evil; there seems to be no correspondence between the moral and the vital measures." In summary Aurobindo concludes that good does tend to beget good, "the total power of good in the world and the greater this grows, the greater is likely the sum of human happiness" and that evil tends towards its inverse. Eventually surmises Aurobindo,  man or nations doing evil will have to pay in a theory of a harmonious cosmos, equal and balanced by its opposite. Though he notes, "it is not often in any intelligibly graded or apportioned measure, and not always clear in translating terms of vital good fortune and ill fortune."