Does Everything That Happens, Happen for the Best?

Many people believe that once they become adherents of a particular religion or spiritual tradition, they need no longer make an effort. The idea that someone else is “taking charge” and taking on the burden of one’s life is particularly enticing for people. They frequently then accept that whatever happens is ‘for the best’ and nothing they do, or could have done, would change that.

The Mother takes up this question and makes it clear that the individual is not simply a victim of circumstances, but actually, has an influence on results by virtue of the attitude of consciousness and standpoint the person is able to take in each circumstance.

Scientists in the field of quantum mechanics indicate that the observer influences the results at the atomic level of quantum physics. The same principle holds true in our human existence. The participant, observer, however we may choose to frame the role of the individual, has the ability to influence the eventual result. As in quantum mechanics one cannot know which possible status actually becomes fixed as the ‘event’, but once it is concluded we can identify the result, so also with human events, we are able to define, after the fact, what ‘actually’ took place, but up to the moment of action, the role of the observer-participant and the force that is active remain fluid and subject to any number of a range of results.

The Mother observes: “Is it really the best that always happens?… It is clear that all that has happened had to happen: it could not be otherwise — by the universal determinism it had to happen. But we can say so only after it has happened, not before. For the problem of the very best that can happen is an individual problem, whether the individual be a nation or a single human being; and all depends upon the personal attitude. If, in the presence of circumstances that are about to take place, you can take the highest attitude possible — that is, if you put your consciousness in contact with the highest consciousness within reach, you can be absolutely sure that in that case it is the best that can happen to you. But as soon as you fall from this consciousness into a lower state, then it is evidently not the best that can happen, for the simple reason that you are not in your very best consciousness. I even go so far as to affirm that in the zone of immediate influence of each one, the right attitude not only has the power to turn every circumstance to advantage but can change the very circumstance itself. For instance, when a man comes to kill you, if you remain in the ordinary consciousness and get frightened out of your wits, he will most probably succeed in doing what he came for; if you rise a little higher and though full of fear call for the divine help, he may just miss you, doing you a slight injury; if, however, you have the right attitude and the full consciousness of the divine presence everywhere around you, he will not be able to lift even a finger against you….”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 1, Looking at Life and Circumstances, pg. 3