IGNORANCE, FALSEHOOD AND EVIL

If we want to accomplish the way Edmund accomplished through long trials and great suffering, then lying is ok. That is life’s method. But if you want to accomplish at the highest level in any field, without the imprisonment, without suffering, lying won’t work. In Mother’s life, lying won’t create anything good or new. Why is life so filled with ignorance, falsehood and evil? This is one of the great secrets of the book.

We do not know ourselves. Our consciousness is limited and not just limited, but wrong. When we look out at everybody else, we see potential rivals and enemies. Because we think of everyone else as different from ourselves, we have wrong ideas about them. When something bad happens to them, sometimes we feel happy. When the boss shouts at someone else who is working in our office, that person’s status falls. Then the boss calls us to do the job and our star rises. We constantly judge ourselves and see other people’s misfortune as our good fortune. We sometimes even abuse ourselves for having these negative feelings.

Who put the devil in our vitals which makes us have these wrong feelings? It is the result of the basic constitution of our consciousness. We identify only with our own life and ego and think that everybody else is not us. We feel we have to compete with them. The higher they rise, the smaller and lower we feel by comparison. This is the nature of the vital ego, because it sees and feels itself as separate from everyone else. We are evolving back from a state of division in matter, ignorant of our oneness with all other beings and things. We do not identify with the Oneness. We identify ourselves with the selfishness of the ego.

Not only do we have an ignorant and wrong consciousness, but we are also attached to it. Not only do we have a wrong impulse, but we believe in it and cling to it. So if someone points out to me that by mistake I have said something that is false or reported something that is not true, I deny it and say that I have been wrongly heard or misunderstood. I defend myself. I defend my wrong consciousness rather than trying to correct it. My attempts at self-justification easily deteriorate into attempts to deceive others about my true intentions and, still worse, efforts to deceive myself, self-deception.

It is understandable that I have wrong consciousness, because all our consciousness is wrong. That is not the problem. It is our attachment to the wrong which makes it false. Sometimes we even take pride in it: “That man came and I told him a story and he went away. It worked so well,” said a farm manager. He observed that the people who worked on the farm were so false that unless you told them a lie they would not be satisfied. If they came and asked for money and you said you had none, they would keep demanding. If you lied and said you would give them the next day, they would go away happily, knowing very well that you had no intention of giving any money to them. That is attachment to falsehood.

Ignorance arises from the fact that we live in a state of divided, partial consciousness. We have evolved from matter, a condition in which the Truth is completely involved and concealed and only gradually emerging. Falsehood arises from the fact that we live in the ego and are attached to our ignorant, divided consciousness. We strive by any means to preserve and aggrandize the limited surface being which is not our true self. Limited knowledge leads to false consciousness and false will.

What then of evil? Not only are we ignorant of the fact that our colleagues in the office are also ourselves, not only are we wrong in thinking that if they are abused by the boss that we will be better off, not only are we attached to that, but we also have the impulse to go to the boss and tell him about the other person’s mistake or even make up a story to discredit the other person. Our false consciousness leads to wrong will and wrong action intended to harm another person so that we can gain at their expense. It becomes evil. Evil arises directly from these other two characteristics of our consciousness: ignorance in the widest sense and attachment to the ignorant view of the ego.

The first instinct of life is to preserve itself. When I have the ignorant attitude that someone else’s misfortune is my good fortune, I want to preserve and raise myself at their expense. If the other man in the office comes up, I will go down. In order to preserve myself, I have to eliminate him. My ignorant, wrong, false attitude becomes an evil intention. Without dissolving the ego and the ignorance, we cannot fully dissolve the evil in human nature, because they are both a product of the evolution from the inconscient. That is why we need to start from the beginning and understand where the problem comes from.

What then can we do about it? We may not be able to entirely eliminate any of these deficiencies from our consciousness. Sometimes things come out involuntarily. What we can do is, first, whenever we speak, be sure to speak only what we know is true. We can do more than that. We can be sure to never speak anything we know to be untrue. We can do much more than that. We can decide to never do or even allow ourselves to think and feel something intended to hurt another person. We can vow never to have ill will towards another person. If we feel any such thing rise up in us, we can immediately call Mother to eliminate it. If you cannot help telling lies, then immediately go to the person to whom you lied and tell him, “I am sorry I lied to you.” If it keeps happening, then go around to everyone and confess that you lie and tell them all the lies you have told. If that does not work, you can even stick a little label on your forehead saying “I am a liar.” This method is very effective. When the false vital consciousness is publicly exposed, it will quickly become purified.

Ignorance – Falsehood – Evil

We know that the ego is ignorant and wrong. We understand that it is like that because of our origins. If it is so unpardonable, how do we rid ourselves of this character? We cannot cure ourselves by pretending either with ourselves or with others that there is no problem. We can cure ourselves by bringing the deficiencies of our nature out on the surface and shining the light of consciousness on them. We cannot cure them by feeling sorry, depressed and impure. There is no use telling Mother, “Oh, Mother, I am so unworthy of you.” You should not feel sorry when you discover something bad about yourself. If you feel sorry for something it means you are still attached to it. Nor should you feel proud when you discover something good about yourself. Both are only movements of the ego trying to boost itself up or pull itself down. Do not feel sorry or happy, but rather shine the light of Mother’s consciousness on the impurity and pray for it to go away. The first thing you should do is detach yourself from it. See it objectively. Do not condemn it. Do not make excuses for it. Do not rationalize it. It is an opportunity for progress, something else we can offer to Mother. Call Mother’s force and Her light to dissolve it and you will make a fabulous progress.