You will often condone quite reprehensible acts if you think they were committed for the sake of a greater good. You have a tendency to look for outright evil, to think in terms of “the powers of good and evil,” and I am quite sure that many of my readers are convinced of evil’s force. Evil does not exist in those terms, and that is why so many seemingly idealistic people can be partners in quite reprehensible actions, while telling themselves that such acts are justified, since they are methods toward a good end.

(Pause.) Very few people really act, again, from an evil intent. Any unfortunate situations in the fields of medicine, science, or religion result not from any determined effort to sabotage the “idea,” but instead happen because men often believe that any means is justified in the pursuit of the ideal.

(Pause, then all intently:) Religion and science alike denied other species any real consciousness. When man spoke of the sacredness of life — in his more expansive moods — he referred to human life alone. You are not in competition with other species, nor are you in any natural competition with yourselves. Nor is the natural world in any way the result of competitiveness among species. If that were the case you would have no world at all.

[...] You will then consider goodness and powerlessness to be somewhat synonymous, and equate power with evil. Not wanting to face such “evil” in yourself, you may then direct it outward and transfer it to another area.

(Pause.) Love is propelled by all of the elements of natural aggression, and it is powerful; yet because you have made such divisions between good and evil, love appears to be weak and violence strong. [...] The “devil” becomes a powerful evil figure, for example. [...]

[...] The man who heals or the man who curses both imply a power of knowledge to many individuals. [...] Normal aggression, seen as evil, is therefore segregated within the self — and also seen everywhere outside. [...]

(Long pause at 9:25.) Some other civilizations have believed that illness was sent by demons or evil spirits, and that the world was full of good and bad spirits, invisible, intermixed with the elements of nature itself, and that man had to walk a careful line lest he upset the more dangerous or mischievous of those entities. In man’s history there have been all kinds of incantations, meant to mollify the evil spirits that man believed were real in fact and in religious truth.

[...] Tonight’s material, however, adds to our understanding of subjects like free will and choosing, good and evil, sickness and health, and reflects upon many questions people have asked us over the years.

Now: Churchmen of the Middle Ages could draw diagrams of various portions of the human body that were afflicted as the result of indulging in particular sins. [...] A man might be born deformed or sickly because of the sins of his father.

As I have tried to explain to you, the rigorous concepts of good and evil are themselves highly distorted, and when you find such a dilemma where goodness is one thing and evil another, and both contrary and separate, then you automatically separate them in your minds and in your feelings and in your fantasies. You do not seem at this point able to realize that what you call evil works for what you call good, or that both are a part of energy, and that you are using energy to form your reality, both now and after this life. [...] And until you divest yourself of such psychological behavior, it will always seem to you that good and evil are opposites, and you will treat them as such in your feelings and in your concepts and in your myths. [...]

[...] There are no forces outside of yourselves that in your terms cause you to do evil. Unfortunately, what you think of as good and evil reside within yourselves, and you cannot blame an evil force for the destruction that runs rampant across the earth. [...] And so that the evil that you think you do is an illusion. [...]

There is no destruction and there is no evil. [...] While you believe that to murder a man is to destroy his consciousness forever, then you cannot murder, and in your terms it is an evil. [...]

If you believe all men are evil, you simply will not experience the goodness in men. [...]

If you see evil all about you in physical life, and if it seems to outweigh the good, then you are not ready. [...]

If your ideas of good and evil are rigorous, unbending, then you do not have the understanding that is necessary for any conscious manipulation in this other dimension. [...]

[...] As mentioned earlier, good and evil effects are basically illusions. In your terms all acts, regardless of their seeming nature, are a part of a greater good. I am not saying that a good end justifies what you would consider an evil action. While you still accept the effects of good and evil, then you had better choose the good.

[...] Your conception of good and evil results in large part from the kind of consciousness you have presently adopted. [...]

In your terms, the ideas of good and evil help you recognize the sacredness of existence, the responsibility of consciousness. [...]

You can, indeed, but do not deny the part of you that wanted to wring the other man’s neck. [...] You were terrified of it because you are terrified of the idea that evil is more powerful than good, and that one stray violent thought of yours was more important and more powerful than the vitality of good. [...]

[...] Now you have some idea in your head that good is gentle and bad is violent and that no violence can be good and this is because in your mind, violence and destruction are the same thing. Now by this analogy, you see, the soft voice is the holy voice and the loud voice is the wicked voice and the firm step is the bad voice and the soft step is the good voice and a strong desire is the bad desire and a weak one the good one so that you become afraid of projecting ideas outward or desires outward, for in the back of your mind you think that what is powerful is evil and what is weak is good and must be protected and coddled and prayed for and begged for. [...]

Now three weeks later we have another encounter and our poor ignorant workman falls asleep again at his chore and our good minister comes by and he looks and he sees the idle one upon the floor snoozing and he thinks, I would like to kick you in the you know where, but he thinks, oh no, I cannot think such an unChristian thought and violence is wrong, so before he even admits to himself what he feels and hiding from himself any acknowledgment of aggression. Instead, he bends down and says, my good man, et cetera, may you live long and hearty and God bless your life and then he pats himself on the back and thinks, I am growing more spiritual day by day. [...]

You can indeed change them, but do not deny the part of you that wanted to wring the other man’s neck. [...] You are terrified of the idea that evil is more powerful than good, that one stray violent thought of yours was more important and powerful than the vitality of good. [...]

[...] Our good minister comes by. [...] So before he even admits to himself what he feels, hiding any acknowledgement of aggression, he bends down and says, “My good man, may you live long and heartily. [...]

[...] You have an idea that good is gentle and bad is violent. [...] By this analogy, you see, the soft voice is the holy voice and the loud voice is the wicked one, and a strong desire is the bad desire and a weak desire the good one. You become afraid of projecting ideas or desires outward, for in the back of your mind you think that what is powerful is evil.

[...] Nothing here must ever be taken as a justification for evil, in humanity’s terms. For many practical reasons at this point, and please underline at this point, it is necessary that man fight against what he considers evil, for he strengthens himself immeasurably by so doing.

There is no such thing as evil, except for the phantoms which man has made. He sees hate in his own heart, what he calls hate, which is but fear, so he projects it into another man’s face and says the man hates him; and he may slay the man. [...]

It is also true however, in a completely different framework, that evil is of his own creation, at least evil as he thinks of it. And if a crime is to be assigned in humanity’s terms, often the victim is as guilty as the murderer, in basic terms, in terms of guilt that no court can weigh.

[...] Ages ago, humans not only watched the animals, but went to them for help. [...] If a human was in a catatonic state after a battle, for instance, the “animal medicine man” would purposely shock the patient into an emotional reaction to bring him out of the state.

Animals, then, do not think of illness in terms of good or bad. [...] With the emergence of man’s particular kind of consciousness, other issues become involved. [...]

(2. The use of animals — rats, say — in experiments involving injections, before giving them to human beings. [Man’s psychological reality is so sweepingly different from that of the animals, Jane added now, that he would inevitably show a wide variety of reactions.]

[...] In one sense, you can say that man identifies with the gods he has himself created. Man does not understand the magnificent quality of his own inventiveness and creative power, however. Then, say that gods and men create each other, and you come even closer to the truth; but only if you are very careful in your definitions — for how, exactly, do gods and men differ?

The attributes of the gods are those inherent within man himself, magnified, brought into powerful activity. Men believe that the gods live forever. Men live forever, but having forgotten this, they remember only to endow their gods with this characteristic. Obviously, then, beyond these earthly historic religious dramas, the seemingly recurring tales of gods and men, there are spiritual realities.

Man’s experience will be so extended that to you the species will seem to have changed into another. [...] It does mean that man will have far greater resources at his command. [...] Men and women will find themselves relating to their brethren, not only as the people that they are, but as the people that they were.

[...] It is as if (pause) man could not understand his own potentials unless he projected them outward into a godhead, where he could see them in a kind of isolated pure form, recognize them for what they are, and then accept them—the potentials—as a part of his own psychological reality (all very intently). As a species, however, you have not taken the last step. Your idea of the devil represents the same kind of process, except that it stands for your idea of evil or darkness, or abilities that you are afraid of. [...] I am not speaking of evil possibilities, but that man must realize that he is responsible for his acts, whether they are called good or evil.

In your terms of time, man has always projected unassimilated psychological elements of his own personality outward, but in much earlier times he did this using a multitudinous variety of images, personifications, gods, goddesses, demons and devils, good spirits and bad. Before the Roman gods were fully formalized, there was a spectacular range of good and bad deities, with all gradations [among them], that more or less “democratically” represented the unknown but sensed, splendid and tumultuous characteristics of the human soul, and have stood for those sensed but unknown glimpses of his own reality that man was in one way or another determined to explore.

Jehovah and the Christian version of God brought about a direct conflict between the so-called forces of good and the so-called forces of evil by largely cutting out all of the intermediary gods, and therefore destroying the subtle psychological give-and-take that occurred between them—among them—and polarizing man’s own view of his inner psychological reality.

This is all apart now from good and evil. It does no good to say “Why should such things be?” since you are here to learn how (underlined) thoughts, feelings and emotions are materialized physically.

[...] To some men there is no good. [...]

The abilities have always been present, however, latent as within each man health is there, though perhaps latent in the same way. The rich man thinks of wealth as a part of himself. [...] The poor man takes his poverty for granted, actually on trust, and takes it for granted he will have more of the same.

[...] The good was seen as light, for men felt safer in the day. The evil was therefore assigned to nightfall. [...]

(9:30.) On the one hand, quite simply and in a way that you cannot presently understand, evil does not exist. However, you are obviously confronted with what seem to be quite evil effects. Now it has been said often that there is a god, so there must be a devil — or if there is good, there must be evil. [...]

PROBABILITIES, THE NATURE OF GOOD AND
EVIL, AND RELIGIOUS SYMBOLISM

[...] He believed in an idealized good, while believing most firmly and simultaneously that man was fatally flawed (loudly), filled with evil, more naturally given to bad rather than good intent. He believed in the absolute necessity of power, while convinced at the same time that he did not possess it; and further, he believed that in the most basic terms the individual was powerless to alter the devastating march of evil and corruption that he saw within the country, and in all the other countries of the world. No matter how much power he achieved, it seemed to him that others had more — other people, other groups, other countries — but their power he saw as evil. For while he believed in the existence of an idealized good, he felt that the wicked were powerful and the good were weak and without vigor.

Before we end this particular section of the book, dealing with frightened people, idealism, and interpretations of good and evil, there is another instance that I would like to mention. [...]

He was as paranoid as any poor deluded man or woman is who feels, without evidence, that he or she is being pursued by creatures from space, earthly or terrestrial enemies, or evil psychic powers. [...]

[...] All natural aggressive elements were denied in their natures, and any evidence of momentary hatred was considered evil and wrong. [...] They cannot communicate as, say, even animals can, with their fellow men as far as the expression of a disagreement is concerned.

(“In this book, Seth leads the reader beyond conventional ideas of good and evil to a new framework of understanding. [...]

[...] Any sense of powerlessness on the part of individual fighting men was given expression as before, this time in a more local blood bath, but the code itself had become shaky. [...] By the last war (in Vietnam), the country was as much against it as for it, and the men’s feelings of powerlessness were reinforced after it was over. [...]

3. Nor was I quick enough to ask Seth if the material Jane delivered for him tonight constituted any kind of contradiction with that of the 689th session; for in that session he discussed man-animal and animal-man as existing within the Tertiary Period. Presumably these “mutated forms” had implied the beginnings of man, in ordinary terms, yet now Seth spoke of cave-dwelling humans as coexistent with large birds at an earlier time. [...] Was it possible that during the complicated rhythms of history, man could have been man (at least approximately as we know him) even before the Tertiary Period, then moved into a long cycle of animal-man forms before returning to being man again? [...]

[...] In basic terms they are no more good or evil than the wind is. I say this because you usually imagine that if something is good, there must be a countering force that is evil. [...] In greater terms these forces are good. [...]

[...] There are, then, “spirits” of all natural things — but unfortunately, even when you consider such possibilities you project your own religious ideas of good and evil upon them. [...]

[...] Again, good and evil and the freedom of choice came to the species’ aid. The evil animal was the natural predator, for example. [...]

Good and evil then simply represented the birth of choices, initially in terms of survival, where earlier instinct alone had provided all that was needed. [...]

[...] Good and evil, the desirable and the less so, were invaluable aids then in helping form the basis for such separations.

[...] With the eraser the “evil hand” would try to rub out all of the good, and at the same time the “good hand” would be trying to erase all of the evil. [...] You will have a tendency to consider the body with its natural appetites wrong, and deny them, while at the same time the physical part of you will look upon your “good intents” as wrong, and infringements upon its own existence.

[...] A rigid, dogmatic concept of good and evil will force you to perceive physical existence as a battleground of opposing forces, with the poor unwary soul almost as a buffer. Or you will think of the poor soul as a blackboard eraser, slapped between two hands — one good and one evil.

In such a case, you will have already been convinced of the power of evil. [...] You may be filled with the feeling that you are in the midst of a great cosmic struggle between the forces of good and evil — and indeed, this often represents a valid picture of your own view of the world.

[...] Your ideas of good and evil as applied to health and illness are highly important, for instance. [...]

Such judgments are very simplistic, and ignore the great range of human motivation and experience. If you are bound and determined that “GOD” (in capitals and quotes) creates only “good,” then any physical deficiency, illness or deformity becomes an affront to your belief, threatens it, and makes you angry and resentful. [...]

[...] Often white is considered pure, and black impure, white good and black evil.