Greetings, my dearest friends. May this lecture prove helpful,
and thus a blessing. May these words shed light and clarification into your
groping search for liberation.
I should now like to discuss a topic I have so far touched
upon only indirectly: the concept of evil. Traditional religion postulates
that evil is a separate force. According to this concept, people have to cope
with making the decision between good and evil. Some philosophies postulate
that there is no such thing as evil: it is only an illusion and in reality
it does not exist. This statement is often misunderstood, even by the proponents
of this philosophy. The denial of manifestation of evil is as illusory as
the belief that evil represents a separate aspect in the universe.
In this lecture I would like to present a deeper understanding
of evil, which will be extremely helpful for all my friends who are deeply
involved in the processes of self-finding.
Evil is, or results from, numbness and a confusion about the
execution of control. Why is evil numbness? When you think of the defense
mechanisms operating in the human psyche, the connection between numbness
and evil becomes quite clear. Children who feel hurt, rejected, and helplessly
exposed to pain and deprivation often find that numbing their feelings is
their only protection against suffering. This is often a useful and quite
realistic protective device.
Likewise, when children are confused because they perceive
contradiction and conflict around them, equally contradictory emotions arise
in their own psyche. Children cannot cope with either. Numbness is also a
protection against their own contradictory responses, impulses, and reactions.
Under such circumstances it might even be a salvation. But when such numbness
has become second nature and is maintained long after the painful circumstances
have changed and when the person is no longer a helpless child, this, in the
smallest measure, is the beginning of evil. This is how evil is born.
Numbness and insensitivity toward one's own pain, in turn,
means equal numbness and insensitivity toward others. When examining one's
reactions closely, one might often observe that the first spontaneous reaction
to others is a feeling for and with them, a compassion or empathy, a participation
of the soul. But the second reaction restricts this emotional flow. Something
clicks inside and seems to say no, which means that a protective layer of
unfeelingness has formed. In that moment one stands separate -- apparently
safe, but separate. Later this separateness may be overcompensated for by
false sentimentality, dramatization, and insincere, exaggerated sympathy.
But these are only substitutes for the numbness. The numbness, instituted
for oneself, inevitably spreads to others, just as every attitude toward the
self is bound to expand toward others.
We might differentiate between three stages of numbness. First,
numbness toward the self, a protective mechanism. Second is the numbness toward
others. In this stage, it is a passive attitude of indifference that enables
one to watch others suffer without feeling discomfort oneself. Much of the
world's evil is caused by this state of soul. Because it is less crass, in
the long run it is more harmful, for active cruelty induces quicker counter-reactions.
Passive indifference, however, born out of numbing the feelings, can go unnoticed
because it can so easily be camouflaged. It permits the person to follow the
most selfish impulses without open detection. Indifference may not be as actively
evil as cruelty acted out, but it is just as harmful in the long run.
The third stage of numbness is actively inflicted cruelty.
This stage arises from fear of others, who seem to expect such acts, or from
an inability to cope with pent-up rages, or from a subtle process of strengthening
the protective device of numbness. At first, this may appear incomprehensible.
But when you think about it deeply, you will find that people may occasionally,
almost consciously, find themselves on the brink of a decision: "Either
I allow my feelings to reach out in empathy with the other, or, in order to
deflect this strong influx of warm feelings, I have to behave in the exact
opposite way." The next moment such reasoning is gone, the conscious
decision forgotten, and what remains is a compelling force toward cruel acts.
In these instances, all harm, all destructiveness, all evil
results from denying the spontaneous real self and substituting secondary
reactions that, in one way or another, are always connected with fear.
The borderline between passive numbness and active cruelty
is often very thin and precarious, very much dependent upon apparently outer
circumstances. If people understand these processes not only intellectually
but within themselves, they are adequately equipped to cope with the world's
cruelty, which so often gives rise to despair, doubt, and confusion.
Active cruelty numbs the person who perpetrates it to an even
greater extent; it not only prohibits the influx of spontaneous positive feelings
but also wards off fear and guilt. The act of inflicting pain on others simultaneously
kills off one's own ability to feel. Hence, it is a stronger device to attain
numbness.
You must always distinguish between the active deeds of either
indifference or cruelty, and emotional tendencies. The indifference or numbness
may not be actively executed, it is possible to experience this non-participation
and numbness but not act upon it. You may do all you can to help another,
perhaps sometimes even overdo it, just because you do not wish, on the conscious
level, to be so indifferent. The desire to hurt others may exist merely as
an emotion, without ever being acted upon. However, when you feel guilt you
do not differentiate between these vital manifestations, so it makes no difference
whether you feel or act in destructive, harmful ways. Hence, the entire trouble
area is denied, pushed out of consciousness, where it can no longer be corrected.
Admitting, acknowledging, facing an emotion, no matter how undesirable, can
never harm the self or others and is eventually bound to dissolve the negative
feeling. Confusing the impulse with the deed, and therefore denying both,
results in extreme disturbance for the self, indirectly affecting others,
with no hope of change as long as the process remains unconscious.
Seen in this light, it will be clear that numbness in its extreme
becomes active cruelty. The difference between these two is only in degree.
It is exceedingly important for you to understand this, my friends. For those
who are most shocked, afraid of, and unable to cope with the existing cruelty
in the world, and suffer most by the mere knowledge that it exists, have inevitably
made themselves numb in some way and consequently suffer from guilt. Therefore
a correlation must exist between one's numbness and one's approach or attitude
toward the evil aspects of life. Some may be overly burdened, some may be
overly sentimental, still others may be overly tough and indifferent toward
the existence of evil. Any such overreaction must be connected with the numbness
that, in some respect, has been instituted in the psyche. At one time this
numbness seemed like the only available protection; later it was unwittingly
maintained.
The second facet of evil relates to control. We have discussed
the importance of relinquishing too tight a control and the failure to use
those controls and powers you have at your disposal for attaining a full,
rich life. The imbalance this failure creates induces rigidity where flexibility
should exist, as well as a helpless loss of self where resilient firmness
should prevail. The imbalance is always caused by the ignorance of, and the
lack of differentiation between, outer and inner self.
All suffering is related to helplessness. The greater the helplessness,
the less the person is able to avoid pain. Children are, by their very nature,
helpless, weak, dependent. Hence, the suffering they may experience requires
some means, such as the numbing process, of weakening its impact.
The helplessness continues to exist in adults whose psyches
have remained childish or immature. The trouble spots in one's inner life
are always marked by the feeling of utter helplessness, while in the healthy
areas this feeling is absent. It is obvious that helplessness and lack of
control are very much connected. Since helplessness causes pain, pain causes
numbness, and numbness leads to evil, it becomes clear that imbalance and
lack of control are also connected with evil.
On a broader scale, helplessness is one of humanity's greatest
problems. The significance of this is vastly overlooked. People feel helpless
toward their own body. There is a considerable area where you do have control.
This area broadens to the extent that you have found your inner or real self.
Where you are distorted, and the real self is hidden from your outer awareness,
control ends. It is then that you feel helpless, weak, afraid.
The relationship between your body, your feelings, and your
personal life circumstances is the same when it comes to control. You have
direct control over certain of your bodily functions. You can move your skeletal
muscles at will. You can determine with your outer or ego self when and how
to use certain muscles, when and how to move. In fact, a number of your physical
functions are under the direct jurisdiction of your outer will and cannot
work unless outer will is exerted. To summarize, all voluntary body functions
are under the direct control of your outer ego.
But there is a vast area of your body the outer will cannot
directly reach. These functions are not under the jurisdiction of the outer
will. They work in perfect order without any deliberate or determined action
of your will. They cease to function well without any apparent determination
of your outer will. The inner bodily functions are not governed by outer control.
This is frightening for you, because you do not understand it. You feel you
have no power over a vast area of your body, and are at its mercy. The same
applies to psychic processes. You have indisputable control over a vast area
of your actions, over the words you speak, over your choice of thoughts. You
seem to have no control over your spontaneous feeling reactions. This, too,
can be quite frightening. You may want to feel one thing, but you cannot make
yourself do so. You may hate to feel another emotion, but you are unable to
prevent it. From suppression and repression, as you all know, strange and,
even more, disquieting compulsions arise, with the result that you feel even
more helpless in the grip of your own personality. Even though such thoughts
may not be put into concise words, the feeling is: "If I do not even
have jurisdiction over my body or my own reactions and feelings; and if a
frightening power which I do not know and cannot control seems to be at work
within me, how much more helpless must I be in the face of life itself?"
Actually, the correlation between the real self and life is
very direct. You do not have any more control over the faculties of your inner
body and psychic processes than you have over your life, nor do you have less.
To the extent that you have found the key to your inner processes, you have
found the key to the apparently fateful occurrences governing your life.
Unfathomable fate seems to control your inner body, your spontaneous
reactions, and a number of outer circumstances. But is it true that you must
be separated from your inner faculties? Do you really have no control over
them? Or can a connection be established between your consciousness and your
inner body, your spontaneous feelings, and your life?
The same relationship exists in life as between body and feelings.
You have direct control over certain happenings. Your outer, direct will can
determine certain actions which you know are bound to produce certain effects.
But then, as with the body and the world of your feelings, there is an area
where this immediate, direct control ceases. Hence the relationships with
your body, your inner world of feelings, and your life are all the same. They
are divided by a borderline up to which you have obvious direct influence
to mold events and results, and beyond which this seems not to be so. There,
another power appears to be at work over which you have no jurisdiction, a
power you do not understand and therefore fear.
From this idea that a strange, independent power seems to play
with you the concept of an outer God has arisen -- a God who needs to be implored
and appeased. Finding the true nature of this power is the ultimate aim of
human spiritual development.
The spirit knows that human destiny is to find the true nature
of this power and to extend this power over fate. But this message, coming
from the depths of your spiritual being, often reaches the outer regions of
the personality in a mangled, distorted way because of all the misconceptions
and confusions. You strive toward this end, but in the wrong way. You often
attempt it by tensing your outer will and trying to assert it over regions
where it has no jurisdiction. You thus misdirect the will faculties of your
outer ego.
Those of you, my friends, who have grown through years of effort
in this pathwork have occasionally noticed that where you were once helpless
you are no longer helpless at all. You not only discover power, strength,
resourcefulness, and adequacy -- qualities you never dreamed you possessed
-- but you also begin to see that a remote control seems to be at work, governing
your fate and your outer life circumstances. You realize that your control
expands. You experience how the areas where you lack control recede, and the
new-found areas of control are not under direct control but work by remote
control.
This extension of control does not, and cannot, happen through
a rigid tightening of the ego forces -- of will, or mind, or reasoning. It
happens, instead, by an indirect process of remote control, which eventually
becomes direct. To be more specific: your ego faculties have to be used, but
not in the way this is usually attempted. They can and must be used to diminish
the strength of outer will. The idea that outer will is omnipotent must be
relinquished, and the outer faculties must entrust themselves to the inner.
At first this may appear confusing, or even contradictory,
but when you comprehend it more deeply, you will undoubtedly come to understand,
once again, the work we are involved with here. When you understand that there
is a vaster intelligence immediately very accessible within yourself -- no
faraway deity separated from you, but an immediately and integral part of
yourself -- when you realize this, you will know that what I have said here
is true. You will see, at first, remote control working where there had been
absolutely no intervention, connection, or control. And eventually remote
control will turn into more direct control.
At first, this cannot be more than a theory you must test with
good faith, willingness, and openness. Later, the theory is bound to turn
into fact, into experienced reality.
If you wish to exert control over areas inaccessible to your
outer will -- for example, inner body processes -- you overexert yourself,
weakening your energies and courting disappointment and frustration. If you
understand, however, that all inner processes -- inner body, inner feelings,
and inner life, manifesting in fate and apparently coming from outside --
can be governed only by the inner person, you will not waste valuable ego
energy. Instead, you will use your outer mind to make contact with the inner
self, so it does what needs to be done. When you realize this, it becomes
feasible.
Now, how can the inner self be activated? It cannot be activated
by itself, for it responds only to consciousness. Your outer, as well as inner
consciousness has the power to direct this inner being, with all its marvelous
resourcefulness, with its intelligence, and power. This inner being, in turn,
has jurisdiction over the inner processes. People have no inkling about the
limitless possibilities, extending far above and beyond what they believe
to be natural law. Once they are understood, the true significance of life
and of meditation will be absorbed, lived, experienced. There will no longer
be a problem or confusion about the use of faculties.
What is vastly overlooked is that the limitations of the outer
ego faculties exist only as long as you fail to understand that these same
ego faculties must be used to directly contact the inner self, which then
controls all inner faculties -- including body, feelings, and apparent fate.
The outer consciousness must be used to activate the inner consciousness.
In spite of the tremendous power of the latter, it responds only to a direct,
deliberate effort of the outer mind. It is this two-step indirect approach
to the power of the inner self that establishes what I have called "remote
control."
This control begins to work more and more as the personality
removes distortions and misconceptions embedded in the psyche. These distortions
create a barrier between the outer and the inner consciousness. But as more
insight is gained, little by little, and the destructive attitudes change,
the cooperation between the outer and inner self extends the areas of control.
At first this appears to be almost coincidental. Occasional
certainties are put in doubt again by unavoidable relapses. You know quite
well that in the process of growth problems do not disappear in one sweep.
Remnants are left that continue to act up, until all distortions disappear.
What was once a mysterious and random fate to which one was helplessly exposed,
over which one had no control, becomes gradually visible as cause and effect
operating by remote control, as opposed to the direct control of outer faculties.
And as development continues, remote control becomes more and more direct.
Then inner and outer faculties become one. And as this process continues,
control -- when to let go of the outer ego faculties, when to relinquish tight
over-control, and when to use outer will in the proper way -- is no longer
a problem. Nor is it necessary any longer to numb oneself in order to cope
with the helpless exposure to pain, for you are no longer helpless.
My dearest friends, the absorption, understanding, the knowing,
and experiencing of all this is of great importance for every one of you for
your pathwork.
Are there any questions now?
QUESTION: I would like to connect what you said with
a problem I have. It seems that I have a tendency to feel overly burdened
by the cruelty existing in the world. Going back to my childhood, I discovered
that one of my pseudo-solutions is to withdraw. Now, when I do withdraw, I
automatically withdraw my love. Is there guilt involved in this?
ANSWER: Yes, but there are also other ramifications.
As I have explained in this lecture, when you withdraw love, you become numb.
Although this numbness during childhood was a protective shield against cruelty
from the outside, it does not prevent the negative emotions in the inner makeup,
such as rage, fear, and anger from arising. These emotions cannot be numbed.
They can only be hidden. This, then, increases guilt. If you were to translate
into concise words what is taking place in the personality, you would say,
"Here I am, fearing the cruelty from outside, fearing the rage and the indifference
of the world. The injustice of others is due to their insensitivity to me.
In my fear of this injustice, this insensitivity, indifference, cruelty, and
rage, I make myself as numb as they must be." The guilt expresses clearly
that one resents in others what one feels compelled to perpetuate, in the
misunderstanding that a similar, though disguised, trend is a protection.
The psyche says, "I stop myself from warm, loving feelings to protect myself.
In spite of the numbing effect on certain emotions, I cannot desensitize my
own rage and anger." This, then, compounds the guilt.
QUESTION: Regarding the physical functions that are
beyond our control: is it this rage and anger, as well as the guilt, that
creates sickness?
ANSWER: Of course. Let me put it this way. All the destructive
emotions that are hidden underground create problems, hazards, and difficulties
that manifest in the physical, emotional, or mental system, or in the outer
life circumstances of a person. It is true that these hidden negative emotions,
that come from distorted values and wrong concepts, create illness. But it
is also true that the outer self can have access to the inner self to create
a state of helpless endurance, instead of correcting, healing, improving,
and preventing negative occurrences in the future. When one feels one is a
victim of fate, of powers outside one's control, one is likely to overlook
the most obvious and direct resources.
The knowledge that the outer and inner self have to cooperate
to bring order, harmony, truth, and fulfillment will enable people to use
their energies in the right direction. It is the inner being that builds,
maintains, and reinstitutes health. Ignoring its presence and its power must
make people helpless victims. It is the inner being that can create a constructive
life, in which everything is given that is needed from the outside, because
no inner barriers exist. It is the inner person who has to be contacted with
the outer ego faculties of will and mind. This should be done very simply
and directly. But what stands in the way must be removed. The removal, too,
happens faster and more adequately when the inner being is enlisted.
Let us finish this lecture with the following suggestion for
meditation. Let us combine control through the inner being with giving up
the unconscious deliberate numbness. The way to approach the relationship
between the outer ego faculties of mind and will and the inner being for the
purpose of eliminating numbness might be the following: "My outer-directed
will cannot reach those areas where I have numbed my perception, experience,
feeling, and sensitivity. Therefore, I wish to contact my inner being of higher
intelligence and greater power than my outer mind to take the necessary steps
to defrost these faculties; to bring them to life, so that I will become a
fully functioning human being. Wherever there is fear and misconception, I
wish to understand them so that I may eliminate what stands in the way. It
is the useless prohibitions I do not yet quite know that cause me to be only
partly alive. I want to be fully alive. To bring this about, I contact the
inner self to help eliminate obstructions and bring to my consciousness what
I need to know, so that I will reawaken and live in the state of fulfillment,
selfhood, and beauty."
You need not repeat these words exactly; use your own words,
your individual way of verbalizing and expressing the essence of these thoughts.
This would be the approach, my friends.
Be blessed, every one of you, in the continuation of your path.
May you feel, every one of you, the light of truth and love that could be
yours if you so choose. When you take the right and constructive steps to
integrate the outer and the inner being, through actively establishing contact
between them, life can be infinitely more than you could wish for. Life is
no more and no less than what you allow it to be, the best or the worst --
or the many stages in-between. Life is no more and no less than what your
consciousness expresses. The limits you set on your fulfillment, like the
limits you believe exist regarding control, are entirely arbitrary; they depend
on your belief. To the extent that you know the powers of your inherent faculties,
you will possess the world; but these inherent powers dwell in the inner person,
not in the outer ego self.
The extent and the realization of your inner faculties depends
on the sum total of your consciousness, on your beliefs, your concepts, your
expressions. All this, in turn, depends on how free your inner being is to
manifest, or how obstructed it is. When you have numbed your feelings, the
inner self is inactivated. It alone is capable of making you and life one
-- in the best sense of the word.