- Friedrich Nietzsche
We experience good and evil because we perceive a presence of duality rather than unity.
- Ernest Holmes
The concept of good and evil is ancient and mythological. We find it throughout the chronicles of wars both ancient and modern. It makes its way into our current culture through films such as Star Wars and the novels of J. R. R. Tolkien. We also find it in crime dramas and hear it played out in the complaints following romantic breakups. But really, what is good and what is evil? Ask most people about evil and they will point to the poster child of evil, Adolph Hitler to make their point. Mother Theresa, of course, exemplifies the opposite end of the spectrum. And it is a spectrum. As human beings we all fall somewhere in the middle.
In order to determine the nature of evil we must try to understand what our highest value is. The good is that which unfolds within us as our highest potential as spiritual beings. It is our Buddha nature; our capacity for joy, love, compassion, communion, wisdom and creativity. This goodness is innate within all beings as it flows from our source. We can connect with it through meditation and prayer; through art, music, dance, etc. We find it in communion with nature, intimate relationships, solitude and sacred love-making. Unfortunately there are also numerous ways through which we can disconnect. It is when we disconnect from and forget our true nature as Being-Consciousness-Bliss that we become mired in a false reality; in dualistic consciousness.
Our fragmented consciousness is based in ignorance, ego-identification, desire, hatred and fear. Once we are disconnected from our source we fall into ignorance. We identify with our limited body-mind egos and we strive to find happiness outside of ourselves by chasing after what we like and running from or attacking what we dislike. We cling to our familiar beliefs, to our ego-selves, out of fear. Imagine the young man who stabs his girlfriend to death out of jealousy. He might even say he was motivated out of “love.” In truth he is under the spell of profound ignorance, not realizing that in killing her he is murdering part of his own soul. All of us are ignorant to some degree when we assert our own needs and desires over those of others; even worse, at their expense.
We disconnect from Unity when we become attached to material things and money, mindless media-consumption, gambling, thrill-seeking, over-eating, sex, drugs and alcohol. We disconnect through our very insistence on the dichotomy of good and evil. I have often used the Irrational Beliefs Inventory developed by Albert Ellis, Ph.D. with clients and trainees in psychotherapy. One irrational belief is the idea that some people are wicked or evil and deserve punishment. It has been surprising how strongly people will defend the supposed rationality of this belief. Even fellow therapists! Our irrational hatred and fear of what we define as “evil” is an “evil” in itself.
The really hard part to come to terms with is that any time we label someone or something as evil, we are projecting an aspect of ourselves. Our world is a mirror of our shared consciousness. We hang on to this idea that “it’s not me,” but we all carry the seeds of ignorance, of “me-first,” attachment, and aversion. Think of how easy it is to get people to murder each other by defining the enemy as evil. In their haste they forget that war itself is a great, and perhaps greater, evil. The peoples and nations that we call evil consider us to be the evil ones. The reality is that we are all human beings trying to learn to live together as a global society. The deeper reality is that we are all one being.
