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 like to discuss a topic that so far I have 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, that it is only an illusion and that in reality it does not exist. This statement is often misunderstood, even by the proponents of this philosophy. The denial of the manifestation of evil is just 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 of my friends who are deeply involved in the process of self-finding.
Evil results from numbness and from a confusion about the execution of control. Why is evil numbness? When you think of the defense mechanisms operating in the human psyche, then the connection between numbness and evil becomes clear. Children who feel hurt, rejected, and helplessly exposed to pain and to deprivation often find that numbing their feelings is their only protection against suffering. This is often a useful and realistic protective device.
Likewise, when children are confused because they perceive contradiction and conflict around them, then 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 therefore maintained long after the painful circumstances have changed and when the person is no longer a helpless child -- then this is the beginning of evil. This is how evil is born.
Numbness -- insensitivity toward one's own pain -- in turn means equal numbness and insensitivity toward the pain of others. When examining one's reactions closely, then one might often observe that the
first spontaneous reaction to others is a feeling for them and with them, a compassion, an empathy, a participation of the soul. But the second reaction restricts this emotional flow. Something clicks inside and seems to say No. This means that a protective layer of unfeelingness has formed. In that moment one stands separate -- apparently safe, but separate. This separateness may later be overcompensated for by a false sentimentality, by a dramatization, and by an exaggerated sympathy that is insincere. But these are only poor substitutes for the numbness. The numbness that was originally 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, which is a protective mechanism. Second, numbness toward others. In this stage, it is a passive attitude of indifference that enables one to watch others suffer without feeling any discomfort oneself. Much of the world's evil is caused by this state of the soul. Because it is less crass, in the long run it is more harmful, for active cruelty induces quicker counterreactions. However, passive indifference, born out of numbing the feelings, can go unnoticed because it can be easily camouflaged. It
permits the person to follow his 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 the fear of others, who seem to expect such acts, or from an inability to cope with one's 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, then 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 for the other, or I have to behave in the exact opposite way in order to deflect this strong influx of warm feelings." The next moment such reasoning is gone, the conscious decision is forgotten, and what remains is a compelling force toward committing 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, and very much dependent upon apparently outer circumstances. If people understand these processes, not only intellectually but within themselves, then they are adequately equipped to cope with the world's cruelty, which often gives rise to despair, to doubt, and to confusion.
Active cruelty numbs the person who perpetrates it to an even greater extent. It not only prohibits the influx of his spontaneous positive feelings but it 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 distinguish between the active deeds of either indifference or cruelty and your emotional tendencies. The indifference or the numbness may not be actively executed. In other words, it is possible to experience this non-participation and this numbness but not to act upon it.
You may do all you can to help another, perhaps sometimes even overdo it,
just because you do not consciously wish to be so indifferent. The
desire to hurt others may exist merely as an emotion. In other words, without ever being acted upon. However, when you feel guilt, then you do not differentiate between these vital manifestations. So it makes no difference whether you merely feel destructive or you act in destructive, harmful ways. Hence, the entire trouble area is denied, it is pushed out of consciousness, where it can no longer be corrected. Admitting, acknowledging, facing an emotion, no matter how undesirable, can never harm either the self or others, and it is eventually bound to dissolve the negative feeling. But confusing the impulse with the deed, and therefore denying both, results in extreme disturbance for the self, affecting others indirectly, with no hope of change as long as the process remains unconscious.
Seen in this light, then it will be clear that numbness in its extreme becomes active cruelty. The difference between these two is only in the degree. It is exceedingly important for you to understand this, my friends. For those who are most shocked, most afraid of, and most unable to cope with the existing cruelty in the world, and who therefore 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, others may be overly sentimental, and still others may be overly tough, and therefore indifferent toward the existence of evil. Any such overreaction must be connected with the numbness that has been instituted in some respects of the psyche. At one time this numbness had 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 which you have at your disposal for attaining a full and rich life. The imbalance which this failure creates induces rigidity where flexibility should exist. It also induces a helpless loss of self where resilient firmness should prevail. The imbalance is caused by man's ignorance of the existence of the real self and therefore by the lack of differentiation between the outer self and the inner self.
All suffering is related to helplessness. The greater the helplessness, the less is the person able to avoid pain. Children are, by
their very nature, helpless, weak, and therefore dependent. Hence, the suffering they may experience requires some means of weakening its impact,
such as the numbing process.
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 the lack of control are connected. Since helplessness causes pain, and
pain causes numbness, and numbness leads to evil, then it is clear that both imbalance and the 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. Now, there is an area where you do have considerable control. This area broadens to the extent that you have found
your inner or real self. But where you are distorted -- and therefore where your real self is hidden from your outer awareness -- there your control
ends. It is there that you feel weak, and therefore helpless and hence 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 therefore cannot work unless your outer will is exerted. To summarize: All the voluntary body functions are under the direct control of your outer ego.
But there is a vast area of your body which your outer will cannot reach directly. 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. Also, 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 that you have no power over a vast area of
your body, and therefore you are at its mercy. The same applies to the psychic processes. You have indisputable control over a vast area of your actions: over the words you speak, over the choice of your thoughts, for example. But you seem to have no control over your spontaneous feeling reactions. This, too, can be 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 from repression, as you all know, strange and 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 this: "If I do not even have jurisdiction over my own body, over my own reactions, and over my own feelings, and therefore if a frightening power which I do not know
-- and which therefore I cannot control -- seems to be at work within me, then 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
over your psychic processes than you have over your life -- nor do you have
any less. To the extent that you have found the key to your inner processes, to that degree 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 forever from your inner faculties? In other words,
do you really have no control over them? Or can a connection be established between your consciousness and your inner body, between your consciousness
and your spontaneous feelings, between your consciousness and your life?
The same relationship exists in life as does between your body and your 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, with your inner world of feelings, and with
your life are all the same. They are divided by a borderline up to which you have the direct influence to mold events and results, and beyond which this seems not to be the case. There, another power over which you have no jurisdiction seems to be at work. It is a power which you do not understand, and which therefore you fear.
The concept of an outer God has arisen from this idea that a strange, independent power seems to play with you. It is 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 man's fate. But this message, which comes from the depths of your spiritual being, often reaches the outer regions of the personality in a mangled, distorted way because of all the existing 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. Thus you misdirect the will faculties of your outer ego.
Those of you who have grown through years of effort in this pathwork have occasionally noticed that where you were helpless in the past, now you are no longer helpless. Not only do you discover within you power, strength, resourcefulness, and adequacy -- qualities that you never dreamed you possessed -- but you also begin to see that a remote control seems to be at work. It is a remote control that governs both your fate and your outer life circumstances. In short, you realize that your control begins to expand. In other words, as your pathwork continues, you begin to experience that the areas in you where you lack control recede and that the newly-found areas of control are not under your direct control but work by remote control.
This extension of your control cannot happen through a rigid tightening of your ego forces -- of your will, of your mind, of your reasoning. It happens 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 must be used to diminish the strength of your outer will. The false idea that the outer will is omnipotent must be relinquished. Then your outer faculties must entrust themselves to your inner faculties.
At first this may appear confusing, or even contradictory. But when you comprehend it more deeply, then you will come to understand the work we are involved with here. When you first understand and then you realize that there is a vaster intelligence within yourself that is immediately accessible -- in other words, not a faraway deity separated from you but a part of yourself, which therefore is immediately available to you -- then you will know that what I have said here is true. Gradually, you will see this remote control working where before there had been absolutely no intervention, no connection, no control. But eventually this remote control will turn into a more direct control.
At first this cannot be more than a theory that you must test with good faith, with willingness, and with openness. Later this theory is bound
to turn into fact, into an experienced reality.
If you wish to exert control over areas which are inaccessible to your outer will -- for example, your inner body processes -- then
you overexert yourself. As a result, you weaken your energies. Moreover, you only court disappointment and frustration. But if you understand that all your inner processes -- your inner body, your inner feelings, and your inner life, manifesting in fate and apparently coming from the outside -- can be governed only by your inner person, then you will not waste your valuable ego energy. Instead, you will use your outer mind to make contact with your inner self, so that it does what needs to be done. This becomes feasible when you first know this and then you realize it.
How can your inner self be activated? It cannot be activated by itself, for it responds only to your consciousness. Your consciousness -- both outer and inner -- has the power to direct this inner being, with its marvelous resourcefulness, with its intelligence, and with its power. This inner being, in turn, has jurisdiction over all the inner processes. Most people have no idea of their limitless possibilities, extending far above and beyond what they believe to be natural law. Once they are understood, then the true significance of life and of meditation will be absorbed, will be lived, will be experienced. Then there will no longer be a problem or a confusion about the use of your faculties.
What is vastly overlooked is the fact that the limitations of the outer
ego faculties exist only as long as you fail to understand that these same
ego faculties must be consciously and directly used to contact the inner
self, which then controls all your inner faculties -- including your body,
your feelings, and your apparent fate. In other words, your outer consciousness must be used to activate your inner consciousness. In spite of the tremendous power of the latter, it responds only to a conscious and deliberate effort of the outer mind. It is this two-step approach
to the power of your inner self that establishes what I have called remote control.
This control begins to work more and more as the personality removes the distortions and the misconceptions imbedded in the psyche. These distortions create a barrier between the outer consciousness and the inner consciousness. But as more insight is gradually gained, and therefore as the destructive attitudes change, then the co-operation between the outer self and
the inner self extends the areas over which you have control.
At first this appears to be almost coincidental. Occasional certainties
are put in doubt again by the unavoidable relapses. But you know by now that
in the process of growth your problems do not disappear in just one sweep. Remnants of your problems are left. These then continue to act up, until all the distortions disappear. What at one time was a mysterious and random fate to which one was helplessly exposed -- in other words, over which one had no control -- gradually becomes visible as cause and effect operating by remote control, as opposed to the direct control of the outer faculties. As your development continues, then this remote control becomes more and more direct. Then the inner faculties and the outer faculties become one. And as this process continues, control is no longer a problem. When to let go of the outer ego faculties -- in other words, when
to relinquish the tight over-control -- and when to use the outer will in the proper way is no longer a problem. Nor is it necessary to continue to numb oneself in order to cope with the helpless exposure to pain, for now you are
no longer helpless.
My dearest friends, the absorption, the understanding, the knowing, and the experiencing of all this is of great importance for your pathwork for every one of you.
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 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 your love, then you become numb. Although during childhood this numbness 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 increases the guilt.
If you were to translate into concise words what is taking place in the personality, then this is what you would say: "Here I am, I fear the cruelty of others. I fear the rage and the indifference of the world. The injustice of others is due to their insensitivity to me. Since I am afraid
of this injustice, afraid of this insensitivity, afraid of this indifference, afraid of this cruelty, and afraid of this rage, then I will make myself just as numb as they must be." The guilt expresses the fact 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 will stop myself from warm, loving feelings in order to protect myself. But in spite of numbing some of my emotions, I know that I cannot desensitize my own rage and my own anger." Then this 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 which then manifest in the physical system, in the emotional system, in the mental system, and in the outer life circumstances of a person. It is true that these hidden negative emotions -- which come from distorted values and from wrong concepts -- create illness. But it is also true that the outer self can have access to the inner self and then use it to create a state of helpless endurance. That is, instead of using it properly to correct, to heal, to improve -- thereby preventing negative occurrences in the future. When one feels that one is a victim of fate -- of powers outside one's control -- then one is likely to overlook the most obvious and the most direct resources.
This knowledge that the outer self and the inner self have to co-operate in order to bring you order, harmony, truth, and fulfillment will enable people to use their energies in the right direction. It is the inner being that builds your health, that maintains your health, and that reinstitutes your health. Ignoring its presence -- and therefore its power -- must make people helpless victims. When no inner barriers exist any longer, then the inner being can create a constructive life, one in which everything that is needed is given from the outside. However, the inner person has to be contacted with the outer ego faculties of the will and the mind. This should be done simply and directly. But what stands in the way must be removed first. The removal of the existing blocks 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 the mind and of the will and the inner being for the purpose of eliminating your numbness might be the following: "My outer-directed will cannot reach those areas where I have numbed my perception, my experience, my feeling capacity, and my sensitivity. Therefore, I wish to contact my inner being of higher intelligence and of greater power than my outer mind. I want to direct it to take all the necessary steps to defrost these faculties, to awaken them -- to bring them back to life -- so that I will become a fully functioning human being. Where there is fear and misconception in me, I wish first to become aware of them and then to understand them so
that I may eliminate what stands in the way. I know that it is the useless prohibitions which I do not yet know that cause me to be only partly alive.
I want to be fully alive. In order to bring this about, I want to contact my inner self and I want it to help me to eliminate my obstructions. I also want it to bring to my consciousness what I need to know so that I will reawaken
and live in the state of fulfillment, of selfhood, of beauty, and of creativity
that is my birthright."
You do not need to 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 I recommend.
Be blessed, every one of you, in the continuation of your path. May you
all feel the light of truth and love that could be yours if you so choose. When you take the right and constructive steps to integrate your outer being and your inner being, through actively establishing contact between them, then life can be infinitely more than you could wish for. Life is no more and no less than what you allow it to be, either 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 which you set on your fulfillment -- just like the limits which you believe exist regarding control
-- are entirely arbitrary: They depend on your belief. To the extent that you know the power of your inherent faculties, to that extent you will possess the world. But these inherent powers dwell in your inner person, not in your outer ego self.
The extent of the realization of your inner faculties depends on the sum total of your consciousness. That means, your beliefs, your concepts, and 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, then your inner self is inactivated. It alone is capable of making you and life one -- in the best sense of the word.