TGU on evil and sin

Thursday, October 17, 2019

3:55 a.m. Gentlemen, you will notice that we meet resistance to the idea that evil is real, rather than absence of good, or a matter of taste, etc. – this despite all your careful exploration of the subject a while ago. Why is that, do you suppose?

There is a very real instinct that says “Life is Good!” To some, this implies that evil does not exist.

There is an instinct that All Is Well. How can that include evil, if evil is real?

An instinct says Nothing By Chance, and this implies that either evil is an ordained necessity (an unpalatable idea) or that evil cannot exist (as it would imply sand in the gears, so to speak).

Interesting take on things. I believe all three of those things, but am not forced to the conclusion that the evil I see around me, now and throughout history, is only an illusion. Life is good; I have come to believe that all is well; I have come to see, in Richard Bach’s words, nothing by chance. Yet – perhaps I am too shallow a thinker; it is quite possible – I don’t see that these beliefs mean real evil does not exist.

Perhaps it is a matter of terms.

Go ahead.

I think you, Frank, in believing those things yet coming to a different conclusion, are seeing things in a different, silent, context from those who believe these things and conclude otherwise.

We might have added, by the way, those who believe that free will does not exist. From that premise, some conclude that no one can do evil (since they have no choice in their lives) or that evil is an intrinsic part of life.

That view doesn’t make much sense to me. I think it is based in logic rather than experience, hence is logically demonstrable, but wrong.

Nonetheless we include it for completeness of statement.

So, you said, “a matter of terms.”

Yes, or a matter of context. When you look at evil in the world, unspoken is the context that 3D life by nature is choice within constriction of time and space. That is, every moment allows you who are in 3D to choose what you wish to affirm, who you wish to be, in that moment. Just as it is true that your life is the sum of all such moments, so, contradictorily, is it the same moments individually. That is, you may express X only 10 times in 1,000 choices during your life – hence, that reaction is a decided minority vote – yet you did choose it those 10 times. Both statements are true. You are both, not merely one or the other.

The analogy that comes to mind is the concept of sin. You may sin many times without necessarily giving in and becoming that sin, so to speak.

Yes to what you said; no, or not necessarily, to everything that the statement may bring to mind, either for you, Frank, or for others. One step at a time. That was a valid step, but only one.

I think you are meaning that the concept of sin as either (1) a one-time thing (no matter how many “one time things” it may be by the time we are finished), or (2) an identification with it, illustrates the concept of evil you’re getting at.

Notice – we know you noticed, Frank, but this is for others – the distinction you just drew is the distinction Catholic theology drew between venial and mortal sins.

Is it? I had never understood the distinction, thinking it more like trivial v. serious, or let’s say misdemeanors v. felonies. But I admit, as that abstraction came flowing out of my pen just now, that analogy did occur to me. I’m not sure any theologian would agree to it, however; it’s just what came to me.

“What came to you.” We like that.

Very funny. But anyway, it does make sense of a distinction I had heard since I was a little boy but had never really seen, and then gave up trying to see. It is the difference, I suppose, between someone taking a drink because he wants one and taking a drink because he has to. Chesterton’s distinction.

However, this is a digression from a digression, if we wish to explore the existence and nature of evil. We were saying that for you, Frank, looking at life as it plays out in 3D, evil clearly exists. As you point out, we examined the subject, differentiating true evil from mere perception as evil, but pointing out that when you have made all careful distinctions, a residue of evil does remain. Just because not everything is evil that is called evil, does not mean evil as such does not exist.

The question then arises, is it only because of circumstances? Does the 3D environment make it appear that some things are evil, or, better, that any thing is evil. And this you explored with us when you realized that the Biblical Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil might be better translated as The Tree of the Perception as Good and Evil, or, in short, the tree of seeing things in duality.

So our answer is that evil definitely exists within 3D terms, but that doesn’t mean that it exists beyond them.

I think you have said or at least implied something similar in the past.

Yes, but as usual, this is a step into a changed river by a changed you, so it won’t be quite the same.

Take for granted the fact that evil exists in 3D – you see it all around, present and past (and future) as you said – and you can escape a tremendous amount of complicated logic-chopping if you do not at the same time insist that evil therefore exists in non-3D. But this requires headlines, perhaps.

• Every kind of energy in 3D originates from beyond it.
• What is true evil – torture, deliberate infliction of suffering, etc. – cannot play out in non-constricted spaces beyond the 3D. That is, they depend for their nature and effect upon 3D constriction into time and place.
• Nonetheless, your 3D existence hinges on choice, leading to the creation of a more permanent “you.” To choose 3D evil rather than 3D good is not without meaning or consequence.
• None of this has anything to do with following religious rules because they are rules; just the reverse. The rules were meant as guidelines, as buoys marking shallow waters; as guardrails.

In other words, we shouldn’t be deterred by the track records of the various religious structures from taking seriously their advice on living.

That’s one way to put it. They won’t see it as “advice,” and their take on things is conditional rather than infallible, though they don’t realize it, but there is valuable material there.

I gather we can sum this up by saying that evil is real within our experience of 3D, regardless of what it may be in any larger sense.

Certainly. Your lives tell you that. It requires a certain effort for you to overlook murder, torture, rape, robbery, intimidation, bullying, swindling, etc., etc., for the sake of an “enlightened” perspective.

I used to say, New Age people are all love and light until you dent their fender.

As long as you are not excluding yourself from that judgment, we have no quarrel with it, other than the omission of the word “sometimes” or even “often.”

I sit corrected. But, often.

So if evil is real within 3D but not necessarily beyond it, where does it come from and what is its nature?

Selfishness, I always say. “Me first, everybody else a long way second.”

But that still begs the question where that comes from. Why should it manifest? Some blame society, some blame circumstance, some say it is innate in human nature.

To some degree, they’re all right, I’d say.

Well, stay tuned.

Okay. Thanks as always.