Good and evil as fruits of the tree

Friday, November 22, 2019

5:30 a.m. I made two mental notes to myself last night. One, my friend Jane Coleman said yesterday’s session was about sex, where I thought it was about sin. Two, I want to ask you to say more about it being a sin to treat a person as a thing.

We didn’t say it is a sin (which might imply that it merely offended a man-made code); we said it is evil. And we will be glad to expound upon it. As to Jane’s comment, we told you that using a highly charged subject would get people’s attention. Her point, that no one had yet commented, is accurate. However, we would expect that they were quite as uncomfortable discussing evil as they were in discussing sex.

I have been well aware, all along, that you were deliberately tromping around where angels fear to tread. Religion and the basis of religion is about as highly charged a subject as I can think of.

We never claimed to be angels! Quite the opposite. We are clearly tarred with the 3D-beings brush. We are of you and among you, and how else could we be expected to understand you and your situation in the 3D pressure-cooker?

We will get to your primary question, but a few words about sex and sin and conscience and human-constructed codes. You will remember, God having created the world found it good! God did not say, “Well, that was pretty good creating, but then I messed everything up by creating sex. Damn, I wish I hadn’t done that.” Nor did evil enter the world through sex. Even the idea of evil didn’t enter the world through sex, but through a deliberate choice to see things in terms of good and evil.

Once humans fell into perceiving the world as a binary choice between good and evil – that is, once humans judged rather than accepted – then you had the concept of evil, hence of promoting or encouraging or transmitting evil, being evil, hence, becoming evil.

Aren’t you contradicting yourself?

No. What contradicts itself is a way of thought that sometimes sees in terms of good and evil and sometimes does not. Choosing one way of perception or the other would not be confusing; flipping between one and the other, often rapidly, usually unconsciously, causes the confusion.

As I am writing that, I am hearing (in effect) that maybe the scriptures are discussing a reality that is not all-human but more localized humans.

Of course. Hebrew scriptures, like all scriptures, try to describe their experience as if it were universal among humans, but it was not. Not every branch of humanity ate the apple! Not every culture presumes (stems from) the existence of a duality. Those that do not – the American Indians, for example – never divided the world into good and evil. They accepted what they experienced, and, like God as described in Genesis, found it good.

But later God became quite judgmental.

Later the people of the book experienced God as judgmental. There is quite a difference.

We’re off on a long disquisition, aren’t we?

It is usually best to follow the energy of the moment. There is a reason why things surface as they do, when they do, and that reason is not always obvious.

I’m good with it if you’re good.

Well, once you have begun to perceive things exclusively in terms of their being good or evil, by definition that is how the world appears to you! You forget that it is your way of seeing things that has changed, and you live as though your way of seeing is accurate and in fact self-evident.

But, consider: That is what Genesis was telling you! That’s one thing it was telling you, that your way of seeing things was limited and limiting, that creation and the force behind creation was beyond “good and evil.” Even if, from the time Genesis was written onward, people were seeing things through that filter, nonetheless that spectacularly obvious clue was right there at the beginning of everything, saying, “Don’t confuse your perceptions with the idea that you’re seeing straight.”

You mean, I realize, but you didn’t quite say, “Don’t think you are seeing straight, no matter how obvious it seems.”

Yes, correct.

Now, seeing the world in terms of good and evil is where you are! If you are children of Western culture, you experience yourselves as members of that community even if you conceptualize yourselves as rebels within it. Innocence cannot be acquired by an act of will. If you are raised to believe that you are sinners, sinners you will be in part of your minds, part of your hearts, no matter what conscious decisions otherwise you might make. (But remember, you are intimately connected to other lives which may not have been lived within this strait-jacket; they may lead you toward greater freedom.)

So, leaving aside “sin” for the moment, what does this mean for good and evil, after you spent some time rather persuasively discussing four categories of evil?

Are you within the belief system or aren’t you? If you do not experience evil, if you do not see evil’s effects, then the question is moot. But in fact you do! Even if you choose to define it away, there it is, and you know it in your bones. It isn’t just a matter of preferences, or of arbitrary social prohibitions. Those things exist, and they are often confused with evil, but still evil exists. You cannot un-eat the apple from the Tree of Perceiving Things as Good and Evil.

So is evil real or apparent? You seem to be saying one, then the other.

We are saying, “both, and,” and we are saying “neither, nor,” the two middle terms of logic which, dropped from the logical syllogism, left humans thinking everything is “either/or.”

So evil does and doesn’t exist; or what?

Within 3D parameters, within an either/or framework, certainly evil exists. As we said, treating people as things is evil. But outside 3D, how are you going to do that? Outside 3D, evil does not exist because it cannot exist. You see?

Maybe. I’m getting, 3D conditions allow us, even encourage us, maybe sometimes force us, to do evil, and in the absence of such conditions nothing can force or encourage or even allow us to do so.

Yes, but in a deeper sense, as well. How could one have a heart condition, or cancer, or even arthritis, outside of 3D? You see? Life in these conditions offers joys and sorrows, opportunities and temptations, not available elsewhere. Thus there are some things that are real – absolutely real – within 3D that are not real outside of 3D.

And our lives here are concerned with what is possible in 3D.

Our assistance is offered for your lives in 3D, remembering that your choices affect more than 3D alone.

Sometimes it seems to me we go in circles.

That is because sometimes the closure that would be satisfying is closure that would be premature because incomplete and misleading.

Okay.

As to treating people as things being evil – next time.

Okay. Thanks very much. Till then.