The Meaning Of Evil And Its Transcendence

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, blessings, and welcome to all my old and new friends here, to all those who have already made progress in their attempt to find the truth of their innermost being, and to all those who have not yet taken active steps, but whose being here signifies a conscious and unconscious search in the direction of finding the real meaning to their lives. I speak to all of you tonight. This lecture is, again, a sequence to the preceding ones, which we interrupted temporarily for the length of the summer season; yet, it is also a new beginning, from which, in the circular movement, you will continue forward and backward -- backward into the past lectures, which should be as meaningful as it is to go forward. This may sound contradictory, but are not all spiritual truths often apparently contradictory?

Every human being is continuously confronted with the deep problem of how to handle the destructive forces residing within himself and within those others with whom he has to deal. This problem seems an unending one, for ever since mankind has existed and can think theories and philosophies have been built around it. Man's search, directly or indirectly, has always been concerned with this great predicament. All suffering comes exclusively from one's own destructiveness, negativity, or evil -- no matter what name you give it. The great difficulty man is up against in this respect is that in his own mind, the mind he uses when he tries to solve this problem, he is within the system of duality; he conceives of two opposite forces: a constructive one, as opposed to a destructive one; good as opposed to evil. The moment he becomes involved in this kind of conceptualizing, he is unable to solve the problem. For he begins to negate, deny, evade, repress that in him which is indeed destructive. Consequently, he is partially unaware of its existence and totally incapable of seeing it and the way in which it manifests. In other words, he is forced to act out his destructiveness indirectly -- with damaging results nonetheless. Thus guilt compounds, because the evil which he hoped to eliminate only increases when it is repressed and acted out indirectly.

In this dualistic approach man becomes split within himself, for he rejects a whole part of himself, which is essential, potent creative energy, and without which he can never be a full human being. His sense of awareness dims as a result of repressing the undesirable part of himself. The less awareness he has, the weaker he is. He becomes more confused and less able to solve this, or any other, problem. The Pathwork is primarily concerned with facing these undesirable parts and aspects in order to remove the self-imposed blindness. It is found again and again that such confrontation, rather than bringing devastation, as it is feared, awakes vital energy and makes you a more whole person. But the problem which still remains for all of you is how to cope with this undesirable material that begins to manifest. I shall talk more about this topic -- not only in this lecture, but in others in the coming working year, which will be mainly concerned with this aspect of the work of self-liberation. I already discussed some aspects of this problem in the last season of our work -- and previously, too, of course. But this year we must be more focused in this regard, for more of my friends are now able to face and acknowledge what had been denied for so long. What then? Yes, meditation is a most necessary aspect, for without the greater Mind the little mind is unable to bring change. But it is also necessary to have clearer concepts and outlines. Your mental concepts themselves must be more accurate and conforming to truths, otherwise false ideas, or even vagueness, will present a block. If, for example, you conceive of the greater Intelligence within you as having the power to make the destructive force disappear, your meditation and request for help will remain unanswered, because the vaguely and hazily misconceived process must present a stumbling block.

Most religions are involved in the aforementioned dualistic approach to this great question. The dualistic approach reinforces man's fear of himself and his guilt, therefore it only increases the chasm within his soul. These energies are used to force himself to be good and not to be bad. Blindness, compulsion, and an artificial picture of life create self-perpetuating patterns with many negative chain reactions and ramifications.

On the other hand, there are also philosophies which postulate that there is no evil. It does not exist. It is an illusion. This is as much true as the opposite approach, which postulates the danger of evil, the life-defeating power of it, and the unhappiness and suffering it brings. The postulate that evil is an illusion is true in the sense that, as I try to explain, there is only one great creative power. There is Union. In the consciousness of those who have transcended the dualistic levels, all is one; as it so often happens, both of these two opposite approaches express great truths, but the exclusiveness with which they are conceived and perpetuated makes their truth also untrue. The denial of evil as a reality leads to wishful thinking, further blindness, and denial of the self; it decreases, rather than increases, awareness. A false picture of reality is created -- the reality of the present state.

To recapitulate: the denial of evil on this plane of consciousness is as unrealistic as it is untrue to believe that two separate forces exist: one good and one evil, so that the latter must be destroyed, whisked away, made to disappear. As if anything could be made to disappear in the universe. Between these two alternatives, man must struggle to find the answer. This lecture is an attempt to help in this regard.

Both approaches lead to repression. Yet acknowledgment of evil also leads to the possibility of further destructiveness. It might lead to a justification and condoning of that which is truly undesirable. It might bring a self-righteous acting out, in which case the guilt would be repressed.

Let us now try to find a way to deal with this problem in a way that can avoid either of the pitfalls mentioned here. Let us try to conciliate the two general approaches to the question of evil. We have talked about this in the past, but let us really concentrate more fully on this one question this time.

You have all experienced how threatened you fee, how anxious and uncomfortable, when you are confronted with certain undesirable attitudes, traits, and characteristics in you. All the defenses you have so painstakingly erected serve to protect you -- not only from the evil of others, but primarily from knowing your own. The meaning of this reaction must be understood in a much deeper way. Too much is taken for granted and glossed over with giving a reaction simply a name and then letting it go at that. The meaning of this fearful, uncomfortable, anxious reaction is plainly an expression that says "such and such should not exist in me." If you examine the cause each time you feel anxious, you will always find that, in the last analysis, you are apprehensive of your own evil, regardless of how threatening another person or an outside event appears to be. If you then translate this anxiety into clear-cut words, as I just mentioned, if you can verbalize your inner thought that certain attitudes or feelings "should not exist in you," you can confront this attitude of yours to the evil in a much better way. For the evil itself is not half as damaging as your attitude to it. We shall come back to this later. Do this from now on, rather than the habitual evasion that breeds such emotional illness, problems, and suffering. Catch your fear and your thought behind the fear: "I should not be that way." If this fear is ignored, the problem becomes worse.

As I said many, many times: our aim on this path is precisely the knowing and acceptance of the evil. This word acceptance has been used a great deal -- for lack of a better one -- but the meaning often gets lost behind the word. So we must pay more attention to how this acceptance is to be brought about. For only when acceptance occurs in the right way can evil be incorporated and reformed in the truest sense of the word. You can then transform a force that has gone awry. Most human beings totally forget or ignore the fact that what is worst in them is essentially creative power and universal flow and energy that is highly desirable. Only when you truly realize this, my friends, will you learn to cope with every aspect of yourself. Almost all human beings, with very, very few exceptions, cope with only a small part of themselves. They accept, know, and only want to know a relatively small part of their total personality. This is, of course, a terrible loss to themselves. For, not knowing that which is undesirable in its present manifestation not only shuts them off from what is already clear, liberated, purified, and good; it creates the well-known situation to most individuals in which they do not love and respect themselves because they have no real perception of their divine heritage, of their actual, already manifest, goodness. All this seems unreal, even fake, because they refuse to tackle the destructive elements in themselves. But what is even more important, and fundamental to this very problem, is the fact that by shutting off this undesirable part, this same part cannot change but remains stagnant and paralyzed.

The price to pay for recognizing and accepting the destructive, evil aspect in the self seems so high. It seems that way. It really is not. On the contrary, the pride of denying it is enormous. The groping seems at times so confusing until you find the method and the manner in which it becomes possible to accept destructive impulses and desires in you without condoning them; to understand them without staying with them; to evaluate them realistically without falling into the traps of either projection, self-justification, self-righteous exoneration, blaming of others and making excuses for the self; or self-indulgence, denial, repression, and evasion. It requires continuous inspiration from the higher forces within and a deliberate articulation in requesting their help in order to awaken and maintain awareness of the destructive aspects and the proper method to handle them.

Whenever you are in an unpleasant mood, in a threatening situation, in confusion and darkness, you can be sure that, whatever the outer circumstances may be, the essence of the problem is the denial and fear of your own destructive attitudes and your not knowing how to handle them. Admission of this fact alone brings immediate relief and deactivates the negative power of them, almost instantly. This new working year must be particularly dedicated to learning to deal with the destructive powers. You must learn what the steps are by which you become able to incorporate this power, rather than shut it off.

The first step must be the application of the theory that destructiveness, evil, is not a final, separate force. You must think about this not merely in general, philosophical terms, as you may already have done more or less frequently. You must take the specific aspects of yourself that you are battling with in your conscience, that make you feel guilty and afraid, and apply this knowledge to all that is most distasteful to you -- in yourself and others. No matter how actually ugly some of those manifestations are -- such as cruelty, spite, arrogance, contempt, selfishness, indifference, greed, cheating, and many more -- you can bring yourself to realize that every one of these traits is an energy current that is originally good and beautiful and life-affirming. By searching in that direction, you will come to understand and experience how this is true specifically, how this or that hostile impulse is originally a good force. When you understand it you have made a substantial inroad toward transforming the hostility and freeing the energy that is either channeled in a truly undesirable, destructive way, or frozen and stagnating. You must articulate the realization that these ugly traits, whatever they may be, are a power that can be used any way you wish. This power can be a creative tool to build happiness, joy, pleasure, love, and expansion for yourself and others around you -- the same energy that may now manifest as hostility, envy, hatred, rage, bitterness, self-pity, blame, etc. This list can be extended, but it is unnecessary, for these are only sub-variations of the same theme we have worked on again and again. You all know these things in yourself, or at least you begin to know of these things in you. But still, after all this time, it is not yet possible for any of you here to truly understand that what you dislike most in yourself is essentially a highly desirable creative power. You dislike it because it is not desirable in the form it manifests at the moment. In other words, you have to be able to learn to fully acknowledge that the way the power manifests is undesirable, but the energy current that produces this manifestation is desirable in itself. For it is made of the life stuff itself. It contains consciousness and creative energy. It contains every possibility to manifest and express life, to create new life manifestations. It contains all the best of life, as you experience life at its best -- and much more which you have not yet been able to experience. Just as the best of life that has revealed itself to you also contains the possibility of the very worst. If you can envisage the possibilities of all life manifestations, because life is a continuously flowing, moving, ongoing process, you can never become fixated on finalities, which create error, confusion, and dualism.

Thus, you will see that by denying the evil in you, you do greater harm to the whole of your personality, to your manifest spirituality, than you realize. For by denying it, you inactivate an essential part of your energies and creative forces, so that they stagnate. Putrefaction follows stagnation. Matter putrefies when it stagnates, when it is no longer possible for it to move. The same with consciousness: it putrefies when it stagnates. Life, as you heard me say many times, is a continuously flowing process. When life stands still, temporary death manifestations occur. Since life is eternal, the death manifestation can only be temporary. This not only applies to human beings, to entities, but just as much to matter and energy. As long as the energy flow is arrested, a death process takes place until the energy flow is released again. This is the manifestation and meaning (yet another meaning) of death on this plane of consciousness. It also applies to an object: when it rots, breaks down, disintegrates, the energy within it has been arrested, for whatever the reason may be. This same arrested energy must, at one point or another, start flowing again -- perhaps long after this particular manifestation. I have discussed in the past the interrelationship between consciousness, energy, and matter. The latter is always a condensation and a manifestation of the former. The way the energy flows -- or does not flow -- and the form it takes when it condenses, depends on the attitude of consciousness "behind," or rather intrinsic to a particular aspect of creation. Thus putrefaction (death) is a result of erroneous consciousness. By the same token, destructiveness is an erroneous form of consciousness. It must lead, either directly (through acting out, giving direct expression to), or indirectly (through denial, i.e., stagnation) to a negation of life. This is why not all supposedly negative emotions are necessarily always undesirable. For instance, anger can be an expression that furthers life and directed against its negation. But denial of anger turns into hostility. Cruelty, spite, self-hate, guilt, and confusion between blame of others and blame of self, and is thus a destructive energy current.

Death will become superfluous, will be overcome, only when energy is no longer stagnant, when it is allowed to move. This can happen only on the level of mind first, when evil is understood to be intrinsically a divine energy flow, momentarily distorted due to specific wrong ideas, concepts, and perceptions. Thus it is no longer rejected in its essence. Thereby it is incorporated into the system. This is precisely what man finds most difficult to do. In fact, he finds it so difficult that he tends to even forget those aspects in him which are already freed from distortions, from evil, and from destructiveness; that which is really liberated and clear; that which is good and beautiful and divine.

Your striving and good will is beautiful. Your pangs of conscience, notwithstanding the misplaced guilt, spring from the best and most beautiful manifestations of consciousness. You must deny, ignore, not experience this best in you as long as you deny, ignore, not experience the evil in you. You distort your concept of yourself when you deny any part of yourself, no matter how ugly it may be in its present form.

The essential key to a total integration of the evil, to its transformation, is the understanding of its original nature, and of the ingrained possibility for it to manifest again in its original form. This must be the aim, my friends. As long as you try to become good by denying evil, by forcing yourself to be what you cannot yet be, and what you can in fact never be, you remain in a painful state of inner split, partial self-denial, and paralysis of vital forces within you. I say what you can never be because your expectation is based on an unrealistic picture when you wish to destroy, or magic away, a vital part of yourself, when you do not accept the intrinsic desirability of the creative energy that is contained even in the most destructive aspects of yourself. You cannot become whole unless this altered attitude is cultivated.

I repeat, this does not mean condoning, excusing, rationalizing the undesirable aspects of the self. Quite on the contrary. It means fully acknowledging them, giving honest expression to them, without finding excuses in blaming others -- and yet not being hopeless and self-rejecting about it. This seems a tall order, but it is certainly possible to acquire this attitude if it is truly attempted; if you truly pray for guidance for this very purpose.

When you no longer negate the ugliness in you, you will not have to negate the beauty in you any longer. There is so much beauty in everyone of you that is already free and manifest; beauty that you totally negate, ignore, do not perceive and experience. And I do not only mean the potentiality, as yet to be developed, I mean the actualized beauty. You can think of this, pray for its awareness, as you pray for the awareness of the ugliness. When you can perceive both -- not one wiping out the other -- you will have made a substantial step toward a realistic picture of life and of yourself, that will enable you to deal with life and yourself and to integrate what now tears you asunder.

By keeping the two sides in mind at all times, you will also be able to do this with others. You tend, in exactly the same way as you do toward yourself, to completely reject and negate the person when you perceive and react to his destructiveness. Or, when you emotionally react to their goodness and inner beauty, to unrealistically overlook the existence of the ugly side. You cannot yet take the reality of the presently existing duality -- of yourself and therefore also of others. This creates continuous conflict and strife. Only by accepting the duality can you truly transcend it.

No expansion of consciousness, no integration and transcendence is possible when consciousness is dimmed, when awareness is blocked. Awareness of the evil must be blocked off when you have a distorted picture of it; when it is ignored that evil is but a distortion of a divine creative power current. Such distortion and lack of awareness causes you to deny and to paralyze, to stagnate and block off the creative process itself.

Every once in a while I refer back to one of the principles I discussed in our very early lectures. They are: selfwill, pride, and fear. Off hand, it may appear odd to claim that these traits are more responsible for evil than the actually evil traits, such as spite, cruelty, envy, hostility, selfishness, etc. How can pride, selfwill, or fear be evaluated as more destructive than, say, hate? The answer to such questions is really simple. It is never the overtly destructive attitudes that are the real evil. If you truly acknowledge them, you remain flowing. The greatest hatred, the most spiteful vindictiveness, the worst impulses of cruelty, if honestly and squarely admitted, if neither acted out irresponsibly, nor repressed and denied, if fully accepted for what they are, will never become harmful. It will diminish in intensity to the degree it is thus accepted, seen, faced, admitted, and must, sooner or later, convert into flowing life-giving energy. Hate will turn into love, cruelty into healthy aggression and self-assertion, stagnation into joy and pleasure. It is inevitably so. This is no mere theory. Many of you have experienced it to be so whenever you chance to hit upon the right blend of self-acceptance. But this realization must be groped for again and again until it becomes second nature, until it is no longer forgotten. When you blindly and self-righteously act out destructiveness, you express evil into your world. By denying its existence, you stagnate vital creative energy, which putrefies in you. By squarely recognizing it, you neither act out nor deny. Thus creative energy flow is released.

Pride, selfwill, and fear are all different forms of denial and are therefore more dangerous than the evil itself which they deny. Again I remind my friends on the path that they have experienced how true this is: to the degree evil is properly faced, self-acceptance, self-liking, new energy, and deeper love and pleasure feelings ensue. But pride, selfwill, and fear make this healing attitude impossible. Selfwill is too bent upon its own insistence which, in the case of accepting present reality in the self, is unwilling to give in; to give up its insistence. It wishes to be already in a different state of consciousness; it wants to be better than it is now. But it fails to accomplish this goal because it is impossible to grow out of something that one is too self-willed to admit. Selfwill makes rigid, and rigidity is contrary to the flow of life movement. Selfwill says, "I do not accept the reality as it is now, it must be now as I insist it is." This makes truthful admission impossible.

Pride says, "I do not want to have such ugly traits in me." Truth requires both flexibility and humility. It also requires courage. Fear assumes that acceptance and acknowledgment of the ugliness will make this ugliness overwhelming. So fear also denies the justified faith in the way the world is created. If truthful admission of what is would mean doom, annihilation, danger, and chaos, then the logical sequence of this assumption would mean that the world is built on deceit, pretense, and negation. Even though such thoughts are hardly ever actually articulated, for they are senseless, many individuals unwittingly build their lives on these assumptions. Their attitudes express this underlying philosophy.

If selfwill is being given up, it does not diminish the free spirit of self-expression. It does not diminish the genuine dignity of man when the pride that hides the evil is given up. The evil does not overwhelm and take over when the fear of it is abandoned. Quite the contrary is true on all these counts.

I said many times before that it is never a destructive impulse itself that presents the real damage and harm, but always the attitude toward it.

This is why anyone who incorporates and accepts the negative aspects finds, to his immense surprise, the contrary of his apprehensive expectation: it increases his self-respect and his self-liking.

So this is, my friends, what you have to learn. A lot of ground must be covered -- for everyone of you -- even though the words sound only too familiar. So far the actual putting into effect of these words is not anywhere near where you will be whole and feel at one with yourself and the universe. The more you do this, the more joy will increase in your life; the more instrumental you will become in shaping your fate -- not through ego control, but through your realistic capacity to create with the life stuff at your disposal. The key is learning to encounter the destructive force in the way that can transform it back to its original nature and thus incorporate it into your whole being.

Are there any questions on this topic?

QUESTION: As this lecture says, there are things in me that I feel are wrong, evil. Yet I enjoy doing these evil things, they feel pleasurable. Then I feel guilty. For instance, when I overspend money. I am negating that aspect completely. Can you help me in this problem?

ANSWER: Yes, you see this is a good example of a predicament arising out of this conflict. I hope to hear many more personal problems in this regard. Now, what you say here is so typical. You negate everything about it. In that way you are confronted with an insoluble predicament: either you give up all pleasure connected with overspending and irresponsibility in order to become decent, mature, realistic, self-responsible, and safe, or you have some kind of pleasure arising out of these traits, but at the tremendous cost of guilt and self-deprivation afterwards, as well as insecurity and fear due to not being able to "run" your own life. If, on the other hand, you see that "behind" the compulsion to overspend and be irresponsible is an in itself legitimate yearning for pleasure, expansion, new experience, this predicament will cease to exist. In other words, you must incorporate the essence of this wish. You will then have much less difficulty to put the wish into effect in a realistic way that will not defeat you in the end. Where you are stuck now is that you are battling with one of those typical either/or problems, as just mentioned. How can you want to really give up irresponsibility if responsibility implies living in a narrow margin of pleasure, in a narrow confinement of self-expression? And since you do not really want to give up this fault, you must feel guilty. Thus you reject the vital part of you that rightfully wishes to experience creation at its fullest pleasure, but does not know how, without needing to exploit others, without being parasitic in one way or another. If, however, you can fully accept the beautiful force underneath the irresponsibility and value it as such, you will also find the way to give it expression without infringing on others, without violating your own laws of balance and without the needless cost of worry, anxiety, guilt, and inability to manage well which you pay when you sacrifice peace of mind for a short-lived pleasure. The pleasure will be deeper, more lasting, and totally free from guilt when the right for it is combined with self-discipline. If you can conciliate desire for pleasure with self-discipline and responsibility, you will express the inner knowledge that says, "I want to enjoy life. There are marvelous things to be experienced. There are many beautiful ways of self-expression. There is unlimited abundance in the universe for every contingency. There is no limit to what is possible. I can realize them and bring them into my life if I can find another way to express and obtain them. The very need for self-responsibility, in its most profound meaning, and for self-discipline will make increasing joy, pleasure, and self-expression possible. Without the acquisition of these traits, I must remain deprived and in conflict." This discipline will be much easier to acquire, the willingness to do so will grow, when you know that you have a perfect right to use it for the purpose of increasing pleasure, joy, and self-expression.

My dearest friends, I have given you new material in this lecture that requires a great deal of attention on your part, bringing it to bear on your own specific situation, problems, difficulties, and feelings. It means opening up in your innermost being, so as to apply this material -- not only theoretically, in thinking and understanding it in general terms with your mind, but really seeing yourself where you deny what is in you, in fear and guilt, and thereby paralyzing the best in you.

The new working year promises again to become a very fruitful one. As the years go by in our mutual venture, the last year has always been deeper in growth and more meaningful in expansion than the previous one. I think this is easy to verify for most of you. There is a constant progression and further realization of energy by all those who contribute to the venture by their own good will to grow and find the truth within themselves.

And to those of you here who are discouraged and feel hopeless about yourselves, I can say only: you are in illusion and error when you feel that way about yourself. Realize this and ask for the truth in which there is no hopelessness and in which difficult periods only need to be worked through and understood so as to make them the stepping stones they can be for the purpose of opening your lives further and bringing more light and self-expression into it. Receive the love and blessings, my dearest friends here, be in peace.

The Guide
by Eva Pierrakos
September 11, 1970

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