A scene of an innocent deer being eaten by a cheetah can disturb us if we look at it from a narrow and moral standpoint. From a wider perspective, we notice that the deer has his own share of the grass while the cheetah too succumbs to death that eats up even the strongest. Stranger still is the game wherein the cheetah becomes endangered while the deer continues to multiply. The only valid conclusions one may draw from this is, firstly, The Eater Eating, Himself is Eaten.
Secondly, there is an interconnectedness of life that links all things from the mineral to man in a long chain. We can also say that Nature in her workings acts in an amoral (not immoral) way. What we mean by this is that it gives speed to the cheetah and swiftness to the deer. Now it is a question of which form makes the best use of its gifts. Both belong to her and live by her. Their forms are temporary constructs for Nature’s forces to manifest, here as speed in the cheetah, there as swiftness in the deer.
If we just extend this logic a bit further we shall see that nature is building forms for higher and higher possibilities to manifest in a body of clay. The cheetah perishes but the possibility of speed in a body of mud goes on to build a genius athlete. The beautiful deer dies but leaves behind the imprint of his eyes as a template for the future. That is how evolution proceeds along several lines until man enters the scene. Yet it is through man that evolution enters a conscious phase when we discover that evolution is simply a progressive manifestation of the Lord of Nature, the Divine, through form and name.
Once we understand this then we have the key to the mystery of the creative play. We understand that all is a single plan in which man himself is destined to be surpassed by a being who will be able to manifest the Divine Perfection within, consciously and concretely. The deer, the cheetah and man himself are parts and plots of the great epic of creation in which nothing is eventually destroyed but recycled into better forms. When we understand this then the play becomes delightful. Otherwise it all seems like a cruel joke when we see events in isolation from the entire chain.
