The Meaning Of Evil And Its Transcendence

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, blessings, and welcome to all my friends and to all those who have already made progress in their attempt to find the truth of their innermost being, and also 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. This lecture is 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 that man is up against in this respect is that in his own mind, the same 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, then he is unable to solve the problem. For he begins to negate, to deny, to evade, to repress that in him which is indeed destructive. Consequently, he is partially unaware of its existence and therefore 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 therefore acted out indirectly.

In this dualistic approach man becomes split within himself, for he rejects a whole part of himself, a part 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, awakens vital energy and makes you a more whole person. But the problem that 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 about change. But it is also necessary to have clearer concepts and better outlines. Your mental concepts must be more accurate and more conforming to the truth, otherwise false ideas, or even vagueness, will present a block. For example, if you conceive of the Greater Intelligence within you as having the power to make the destructive force disappear, then your meditation and your request for help will remain unanswered, because the vague 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 to force himself 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, that it does not exist, that 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 the suffering it brings. The postulate that evil is an illusion is true in the sense that 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 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, to further blindness, and to a denial of the self. It decreases awareness. A false picture of reality is created -- the reality of your 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, as a consequence, the latter must be destroyed, whisked away, made to disappear. As if anything in the universe could be made to disappear. Man must struggle to find the answer between these two alternatives. This lecture is an attempt to help you in this regard.

Both approaches lead to repression. Yet the acknowledgment of evil can also lead to the possibility of further destructiveness. It might lead to a justification and to a condoning of that which truly is 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 this time let us really concentrate more fully on this one question.

You have all experienced how threatened, how anxious, and how uncomfortable you feel when you are confronted with certain undesirable attitudes, traits, and characteristics in you. All the defenses that 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, then 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 translate this anxiety into clear-cut words -- that is, if you can verbalize your inner thought that certain attitudes or feelings "should not exist in you" -- then you will be able to confront your attitude to the evil in you 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 that says: "I should not be that way." If this fear is ignored, then the problem becomes worse.

Our aim on this path is precisely the knowing and the 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. Then you can transform a force that has gone awry. Most human beings either totally forget or ignore the fact that what is worst in them is essentially a creative power and universal flow and an energy that is highly desirable. Only when you truly realize this will you learn to cope with every aspect of yourself. Almost all human beings, with very few exceptions, cope with only a small part of themselves. They accept, they know, and they want to know only a relatively small part of their total personality. This is 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 also creates the well-known situation to most individuals in which they do not love and respect themselves because they have no perception of their divine heritage. In other words, 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, then 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 high. Although it seems that way, it really is not. On the contrary, the price you pay for denying it is enormous. At times the groping seems confusing until you find the method and the manner in which it becomes possible for you to accept the destructive impulses and desires in you without condoning them; to understand them without staying with them; to evaluate them realistically without falling into the trap of projection, the trap of self-justification, the trap of self-righteous exoneration, the trap of blaming others and of making excuses for the self; the trap of self-indulgence, the trap of denial, the trap of repression, and the trap of evasion. It requires continuous inspiration from the higher forces within and a conscious and deliberate articulation in requesting their help in order to first awaken and then to maintain awareness of the destructive aspects and of the proper method to handle them.

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

The first step must be the application of the theory that destructiveness or 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 consciousness -- aspects that make you feel guilty and afraid -- and apply this knowledge I am giving you to all that is most distateful to you, both in yourself and in others. No matter how actually ugly some of those manifestations are -- such as your cruelty, your spite, your arrogance, your contempt, your selfishness, your indifference, your greed, your cheating ways, and many more -- you have to bring yourself to realize that every one of these traits is an energy current that originally is good, is beautiful, and is life-affirming. By searching in that direction, you will come first to understand and then to experience how this is true specifically. In other words, how this or that hostile impulse is originally a good force. When you understand it, then 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 else frozen and stagnating. You must articulate your realization of the fact 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 with which to build happiness, to build joy, to build pleasure, to build love, and to build expansion both for yourself and for others around you. In other words, the same energy that now manifests as your hostility, as your envy, as your hatred, as your rage, as your bitterness, as your self-pity, as your 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 to truly understand that what you dislike most in yourself is essentially a creative power that is highly desirable. You dislike it because it is not desirable in the form in which it manifests at the moment. In other words, you have to learn to fully acknowledge the fact that the way in which the power manifests is undesirable, but that the energy current which 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 to express life: in other words, to create new manifestations of life. It contains all the best of life, so that you can 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 worst. If you can envisage the possibilities of all the life manifestations -- because life is a continuously flowing, moving, ongoing process -- then you can never become fixated on finalities, which only 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 and to your manifest spirituality than you realize. For by denying it, you inactivate an essential part of your energies and of your 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 is a continuously flowing process. When life stands still, then temporary death manifestations occur. Since life is eternal, then the death manifestation can only be temporary. This applies not only to human beings, to entities, but just as much to matter and to energy. As long as the energy flow is arrested, then a death process takes place until the energy flow is released again. This is the manifestation and the meaning (yet another meaning) of death on this plane of consciousness. It also applies to an object. When it rots, when it breaks down, when it disintegrates, then it is because the energy that is within it has been arrested, for whatever the reason may be. This same arrested energy must start flowing again at one point or another -- perhaps long after this particular manifestation. In the past I have discussed the interrelationship between consciousness, energy, and matter. Matter is always a condensation and a manifestation of consciousness and of energy. Both the way the energy either flows or does not flow and the form it takes when it condenses depend on the attitude of the consciousness 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 it is not true to believe that all supposedly negative emotions are perforce always undesirable. For instance, anger can be an expression that furthers life and that is directed against its negation. But the denial of anger turns into hostility, into cruelty, into spite, into self-hate, into guilt, and into a confusion between blame of others and blame of the self. Thus it is a destructive energy current.

Death will be overcome -- and therefore will become superfluous -- when energy is no longer stagnant. In other words, when it is allowed to move. This happens on the level of the mind first, when evil is understood to be intrinsically a flow of divine energy that is momentarily distorted due to specific wrong ideas, to specific untrue concepts, and to specific false 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 even tends to forget those aspects in him which are already free from distortions, from evil, and from destructiveness. In other words, that in him which is liberated and clear, that in him which is good, which is beautiful, which is divine.

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

The essential key to a total integration of the evil -- to its transformation -- is the understanding of its original nature and knowing of the ingrained possibility for it to manifest in its original form once again. This must be the aim. As long as you try to become good by denying the evil in you -- by forcing yourself to be what as yet you cannot, and what in fact you can never be -- then you remain in a painful state of inner split, of partial self-denial, and of the 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 to magic away, a vital part of yourself. In other words, 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, or rationalizing the undesirable aspects of the self. On the contrary. It means acknowledging them fully and giving honest expression to them without finding excuses in blaming others and yet not being hopeless and self-rejecting about it. This is a tall order. But it is certainly possible to acquire this attitude if it is truly attempted and if you pray for guidance for this purpose.

When you no longer negate the ugliness in you, then you will not have to negate the beauty in you any longer either. There is so much beauty in every one of you that is already free -- and therefore that can manifest -- beauty that you totally negate and ignore, and which you therefore 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 first think of this and then pray for its awareness, just as you pray for the awareness of your ugliness. When you can perceive both -- not one wiping out the other -- then you will have made a substantial step toward a realistic picture of life and a realistic picture of yourself, one that will enable you to deal both with life and with yourself, and then to integrate what now tears you asunder.

By keeping the two sides of you in mind at all times, then you will also be able to do this with others. In exactly the same way you do toward yourself, you tend to completely reject and to negate the person when you first perceive and then react to his destructiveness. Conversely, when you emotionally react to their goodness and to their inner beauty, then you tend to unrealistically overlook the existence of their ugly side. You cannot accept the reality of their presently-existing duality -- both of yourself and 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 no transcendence is possible when consciousness is dimmed or when awareness is blocked. Awareness of your evil must be blocked off when you have a distorted picture of it. In other words, when it is ignored that the evil is nothing but the distortion of a divine creative power current. Such a distortion and such lack of awareness cause you to deny, to paralyze, to stagnate, and to block off the creative process itself.

Every once in a while I refer back to one of the principles I discussed in our 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 and selfishness. How can pride, selfwill, or fear be evaluated as more destructive than, say, hate? The answer to such a question is really simple. It is never the overtly destructive attitudes that are the real evil. If you acknowledge them, then you remain flowing. The greatest hatred, the most spiteful vindictiveness, the worst impulses of cruelty will never become harmful if honestly and squarely admitted. That is, if neither acted out irresponsibly nor repressed and denied. In other words, if it is fully accepted for what it is. To the degree it is first seen, then admitted, third faced, and finally accepted, to that degree it will diminish in intensity. When you have done all this, then -- sooner or later -- it must convert into flowing life-giving energy. Your hate will turn into love, your cruelty will turn into healthy aggression and self-assertion, your stagnation will turn 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 your destructiveness, then you express evil into your world. By denying its existence, you stagnate vital creative energy, which then putrefies in you. By squarely recognizing it, you neither act it out nor do you deny it. Thus the creative energy flow is released.

Therefore, pride, selfwill, and fear are all different forms of denial and are more dangerous than the evil itself which they deny. My friends on the path have experienced how true this is: To the degree that evil is properly faced, to that degree self-acceptance, self-liking, new energy, deeper love, and pleasure feelings always 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 the present reality in the self, is unwilling to give in and to give up its insistence. It wishes to be already in a different state of consciousness. In other words, 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 selfwilled to admit. Selfwill makes one rigid. And rigidity is contrary to the flow of the movement of life. Selfwill says: "I do not accept the reality as it is now. It must be as I insist it is." This makes a truthful admission impossible.

Pride says, "I do not want to have such ugly traits in me." Truth requires flexibility, humility, and courage. Fear falsely assumes that the acknowledgment -- and the subsequent acceptance -- of the ugliness will make this ugliness overwhelming. So fear also denies the justified faith in the way the world is created. If the truthful admission of what is in you would really mean doom, annihilation, danger and chaos -- as you unconsciously believe -- then the logical sequence of this false assumption -- its false conclusion -- would be that the world is built on deceit, on pretense, and on negation. Even though such thoughts are never actually articulated, for they are senseless, many individuals unwittingly build their lives on these false assumptions. Their attitudes express this underlying philosophy.

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

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

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

So this is what you have to learn, my friends. A lot of ground has to be covered -- for every single one of you -- even though the words sound familiar. So far, the actual putting into effect of these words is not anywhere near where it needs to be in order for you to be whole and to feel at one with yourself and with the universe. The more you do this, the more joy will increase in your life. And the more instrumental you will become in shaping your own fate. But not through ego control, but rather through your capacity to create with the life stuff at your disposal. The key is learning to encounter the destructive force in you in a 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, for they feel pleasurable. But then I feel guilty. For instance, when I overspend money. I am negating that aspect completely. Can you help me with this problem?

ANSWER: Yes. This is a good example of a predicament arising out of this conflict. I hope to hear many more personal problems in this regard. What you say is so typical. You negate everything about it. In that way you are confronted with an insoluble predicament: either you give up all the pleasure that is connected with overspending and with 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. On the other hand, if you can see that behind your compulsion to overspend and behind your compulsion to be irresponsible there exists a legitimate yearning for pleasure, a legitimate yearning for expansion, and a legitimate yearning for a new experience, then this predicament will cease to exist. In other words, you must incorporate the essence of this wish. Then you will have much less difficulty in putting 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 I just mentioned. How can you really want to give up your irresponsibility if responsibility implies living in a narrow margin of pleasure, in a narrow confinement of self-expression? And since you do not want to give up this fault, then you must feel guilty. Thus you reject the vital part of you that rightfully wishes to experience the pleasure of creation at its fullest, but which does not know how to do so without exploiting others and without being parasitic in one way or another. However, if you can fully accept the beautiful force that exists underneath your irresponsibility and value it as such, then you will also find a way to give it expression without infringing on others, without violating your own laws of balance, and without the needless cost of worry, of anxiety, of guilt, and of the inability to manage your life which you pay when you sacrifice your peace of mind for a short-lived pleasure. The pleasure will be deeper, more lasting, and totally free from guilt when the inherent right which you have to it is combined with self-discipline. If you can conciliate your desire for pleasure with self-discipline and with responsibility, then you will express your inner knowledge that says: "I want to enjoy life. There are many 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 obtain them and to express them. The realization of my need for self-responsibility, in its most profound meaning, and of my need for self-discipline will make possible ever-increasing joy, pleasure, and self-expression. But I know that without the acquisition of these two traits, then I must remain both deprived and in conflict." This discipline and this sense of responsibility will be much easier to acquire and the willingness to do so will grow when you know that you have a perfect right to use them for the purpose of increasing your pleasure, your joy, and your self-expression.

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

The new working year promises 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 that this is easy to verify for most of you. There is a constant progression and the further realization of energy by all those who contribute to the venture by their good will to grow and to find the truth within themselves.

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

September 11, 1970