Questioner: If God is in everything, why is this evil prevalent in the world…this sort of “disproportion”?
Baba: God is One, Infinite, and as you now said, is in everything. But this good and evil, virtue and vice, suffering and happiness, are all apparent, and not real. It is a delusion; and yet it is necessary and serves its purpose. It is through this duality of good and evil that one has to realize oneness. This duality is the medium, because, in reality, bad is not bad as you think It is a degree of goodness. For instance, love and hatred, through opposite in terms, when carried to the extreme, both have same result. You are surprised, but I will explain. Suppose A loves me very much. It means he thinks continually of nothing else but of me and is perfectly lost in me. Now, there is B, who hates me. His extreme hatred makes him think of me always, and he is continually absorbed in me and thinks of me. Thus, love and hatred, though poles apart apparently, have the same result in their extremes.
So this duality of good and evil are necessary to know what oneness is. A bird, free from its very birth and never caged, does not know what freedom really is, because it has always been free, that is, in the same condition from its very birth. If it is once caged, that is, the condition reversed, and left free again later on, then alone will it know and appreciate the value and meaning of “freedom.” The cage therefore becomes the medium for the bird to realize freedom.
–Silent Teachings of Meher Baba, compiled and edited by Naosherwan Anzar, p152