A client reports: During an appointment with a gynaecologist, the doctor diagnoses a lump in her breast. A tissue examination reveals an advanced disease (tumour) with extensive metastases. At further appointments, she is given a lifespan of only about six months. She quits her job and throws out her unfaithful husband. Due to her loss of strength, she can no longer look after the household, but as her daughter has just become unemployed, she takes over the housework. She lies down on the sofa and starts reading the Bible.
After a quarter of a year, all the lumps and metastases have disappeared. The doctors shrug their shoulders in disbelief, but can’t get past the result and use the term “spontaneous remission”.
She then takes up a new job, which consists of managing spiritual events: she manages the appointments of spiritual teachers and organises their seminars and lectures.
The famous parable of the paralysed man (John 5) provides a revealing insight into the nature of paralysis. Jesus says to the paralysed man:
“What hinders you? Get up, take up your bed and walk!”
The illness seems to be dependent on something, i.e. conditional. Without any external action – apart from the question of whether he wanted to get well – the sick man actually gets up. For 38 years, he has made his healing dependent on external healing by helpers, but this has not yet happened. The Nazarene makes it clear to him that the overcoming of his suffering does not come from outside, but is within him and should only have been activated.
There are many indications that evil, illness, dictatorship, terror, misfortune, etc. are not the powers they appear to be:
Literature: Goethe has the devil say regretfully about the “virtuous” Gretchen, who has just come from confession and had next to nothing to confess there either:
“… I have no power over her.”
(Faust I, Chapter 10: Street)
Epic: The tale of woe of the ancient drama character Odysseus is shaped by divine guidance. The concrete evil, including in the form of the one-eyed Cyclops Polyphemus, the son of a god, tortures the hero incessantly, but ultimately cannot defeat him and raises him to a higher level of consciousness through the victorious battles. Poseidon, the god of the sea and brother of Zeus, the prince of the gods, is behind the evil. Furthermore, Homer’s sirens simply cannot harm the hero as long as he does not enter their sphere of influence. This area is the belief in their power.
Fairy tales: The devil – or evil demon – explodes if you know the code (!) to his fragile identity (Rumpelstiltskin). Or he takes flight for the same reason as in “The Devil and his Grandmother.”
Snow White cannot be killed by the poisoned apple.
Philosophy: The ancient intellectual giant Plato comments on evil:
“The way [ … to elude evil …] is to align oneself with the highest good, that which evil can no longer touch and in whose sphere of action it is powerless (!)…” (Theaetetus 177b)
Mythology: In the Norse saga of Siegfried, the dragon slayer (dragon symbolising evil, the serpent, the devil, etc.) is invulnerable after bathing in the dragon’s blood. It shows that he could have become master of evil, with invulnerability as a consequence.
Jewish wisdom: It recognises a whole series of symbolic events and conditions in which evil has no power:
In Daniel, it is the men in the fiery furnace who come out unharmed (Daniel 3).
It is Job, in whom the devil is a servant of God, who tests Job by taking everything from him; however, Job ultimately remains unharmed and receives back everything he has lost several times over.
It is also the opening of the Red Sea for Moses and the destruction of evil (in the form of Pharaoh’s army) at the last moment.
It is also the well-known story of David and Goliath, in which the steppik defeats the heavily armed giant warrior with a slingshot (symbolising the power of thought, like the arrows of Odysseus).
Rembrandt: David and Goliath. 1655
Wikimedia Commons: Metropolitan Museum of Arts Collection.
Public domain, CC0 1.0 public domain
Psalm 23, in which the person concerned does not need to fear any misfortune, and Psalm 91 are particularly meaningful because they indicate the condition for immunity from material challenges:
“Though a thousand fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, it shall not befall thee.” … This applies to those who are “… under the umbrella of the Most High…”. (It means: “those, who have spiritual consciousness”)
Buddhism: The Pali canon provides information about the character of evil, here in the form of Mara, the “cause of suffering”. These are the Sutta Nipata III,2 and then the following Samyutta Nikaya:
“Then Mara, the Evil One, wishing to cause fear, trembling, shivering of the skin in the Blessed One, went to where the Blessed One was. …
Not far from the Exalted One, he called forth changing splendours, both beautiful and ugly.
But the Exalted One knew that this was Mara, the Evil One, and he addressed him:
“Wandering in the cycle of births for a long time, you have taken on beautiful and ugly forms.
Enough of this, you evil one, you are beaten, bringer of death! Those who are well controlled in deeds, words and thoughts are not submissive to you, Mara, …”
Then Mara, the evil one, realised that the Exalted One knows me, that the guide on the path of salvation knows me, and disappeared on the spot, sorrowful and saddened.”
(Mara Samyutta, 1.4.3.)
The dragon, image, and demon. 1887, DuBose, Hampden
Internet Archive Book Images, Flickr’s The Commons
The Buddha is saying that the person who knows evil, i.e. who realises its fundamental nature of nothingness, has become immune to any consequences, so that the evil must “sadly disappear”. Mara is the symbol for everything that causes suffering.
Hinduism: In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna speaks to the seeker by revealing himself as the Lord of life and death:
“… he who … consecrates his actions to the deity is no more touched by evil than the lotus leaf is touched by water.” (5,10)
Islam: The Sufis equate “iblis”, Satan, with the lower instincts, the “nafs”. These are the counterpart to “ruch”, the spirit, the divine soul in man. In the entire theological history of Islam, Satan has not been given any direct power over people. He can only try to seduce them into evil, like the serpent in the story of creation or the sirens in the Odyssey. He remains a part of God like Mephisto in Goethe’s Faust.
In his work “Javidnama”, Muhammad Iqbal summarises the role of the tempter by describing him as the force that ultimately leads man to develop further. Adam stops living his life with a limited state of consciousness, but learns to fight under the pressure of suffering, to overcome evil and thus to rise to perfection, which he did not fully have in paradise due to his limited consciousness – he knew no evil. In Iqbal, Satan complains that people simply obey him too much. He has no fun with such underchallenge. He would like to fight on equal terms with someone who could finally overcome him. He would prostrate himself before them.
(Annemarie Schimmel: Muhammad Iqbal between poetry, philosophy and politics).
Taoism: The master of ancient Chinese spirituality, Lao Tse, addresses the problem of external power in his own unique way. He mentions the consequences of recognising their powerlessness:
“The sage, assured of the inner god, no external power can hold,
and no force can destroy him.” (50)
“Because he, the master of letting go, is favourable to all, no one can harm him.” (66)
Children’s literature: In his famous children’s book “Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver”, author Michael Ende describes Mr Tur-Tur, an illusory giant who is huge when you are far away from him, but who shrinks and loses his enormous size if you approach him bravely, i.e. if you don’t let yourself be deceived by appearances.
Film: In “Matrix”, the protagonist Neo, the “chosen one”, succeeds in overcoming evil in the form of the “agents” equipped with extraordinary powers through his spiritual development. This enables him to initially evade their projectile sheaves, later to stop their bullets and finally to go into direct confrontation with them and even penetrate them, thus initiating a process of fusion or unity in order to show their powerlessness and shatter them.
(The motif of merging with evil is part of many cultural traditions and is based on the realisation of unity with the “enemy”. It begins more than four millennia ago with the ancient Mesopotamian creation myth Enuma Elish, in which the god Marduk allows his spiritual power to penetrate the dragon-like monster Tiamat and tear it apart. In the fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood is devoured by the evil wolf and yet rises unscathed. In the present day, Agent K allows himself to be devoured by the monster in “Men in Black I”, thus blowing it apart and winning the day. In general, the theme of uniting with evil through inner (!) non-fighting and non-fleeing is a central point of the entire Christian doctrine. Evil as a whole is not abolished, but crumbles specifically before those who stand in its way).
The powerful words on the subject of the “powerlessness of evil” are uttered by Jesus standing before Pilate as he shows the Roman ruler his limits:
“You would have no power over me if it had not been given you from above …”
All these sources express something that seems absurd in everyday life. Everyone knows about the power of superiors, administrations, corporations, courts, we know about the power of terrorist organisations and their assassinations, and some still know from experience about the power of secret police and the military. Everyone has had personal experience of the power of serious diseases, and we also know from history and the mass media the enormous effects of epidemic phenomena such as AIDS or coronavirus. So how can it be that the wisdom of the nations claims that suffering and evil exist, but that they do not have the power that we think we know they have? However, this should only apply to “virtuous people”, “dragon slayers”, “cunning sufferers”, “boys with a catapult”, “orthodox believers”, “people certain of their inner god”.
Some wisdom statements thus go beyond the level of assertion and reveal the conditions that apply to these outrageous claims.
To get a step closer to the character of the evil, it is worth taking a look at the etymology: in Old High German, the word “bosi” means “inflated, swollen”, which can still be found today in words or phrases such as “in Bausch und Bogen” or “Pausbacken”. The essence of the meaning is that the phenomenon appears more extensive and worse than it really is, a pseudo-giant. Nevertheless, nobody can imagine that the diagnosis of “stomach cancer” that you have just received could have anything to do with appearances and hot air. Rather, it is first and foremost a hard physical reality, and nobody would think of looking past it, simply getting up, taking their bed and leaving.
If we take a closer look at being ill, the principle of “as within, so without” is important, i.e. what is dominant in our consciousness (or rather: what we make it to be) manifests itself in our environment due to its fate-forming power (see chapter 10).
The counterpart to the constant thoughts of fear and worry is a consciousness in which there is no room for negative attacks, no fears, no worries, no anger, no greed, only serenity under the umbrella: “… I shall not lack anything.” This also and especially applies in the coronavirus era.
Illness is a phenomenon that – apart from childhood illnesses – indicates a disorder of the soul, a deviation from the soul’s state of perfection, so to speak. Our fundamental identity is the soul, whose manifestation is our body. The symptom of illness is a signal that our hardware and software (physique and psyche) are not in tune with the course of the soul. If this cause is recognised, the effects, i.e. the symptoms, can be permanently eliminated. This is what Jesus does in the symbolic encounter with the paralysed man. Spiritual healers proceed accordingly, focussing on the spiritual background and deriving the elimination of the symptoms from it. This is the crux of conventional medicine, which essentially understands healing as the suppression of symptoms and cannot prevent illness as such from disappearing.
Perfection consciousness and substantial health can only be achieved if one opens oneself to the influx of the soul. When “seeking” dominates, i.e. focussing on one’s own divine identity, there is no longer any room for worry, fear, anger and greed. Only in this way can such initially improbable goals as freedom from worry, health, prosperity, interpersonal harmony, peace of mind, fearlessness before evil and love of one’s enemies be properly understood and achieved. This does not work on the earthly-psychic level – e.g. with positive thinking. Through ignorance we have surrendered our dominion to accidents, burglars, pathogens, economic fluctuations, governments, people who run amok, assassins, etc., in short, to dominion from outside, although it is within us. By changing our consciousness, however, we deny any power of external authorities – on me – and transfer it back to its actual place, our inner self. And the fact that it is effective there as a conviction, albeit unconsciously, shows itself in its negative form, as illness, marital hell, business collapse, etc., summarised: through a lack of spiritual embedding.
In this respect, it is not evil that is the power, but the orientation of consciousness towards evil and the belief in evil, which is only a provocateur like the devil in the desert. But if I believe in it, it becomes real through the creative power of consciousness. The seduced (!) consciousness is the cause of evil and the real evil is its effect. So we ourselves are the creators of the power of evil because we fall for it. Anyone who allows themselves to be intimidated by the threat of alimony, job loss, a cancer diagnosis or bankruptcy becomes a real victim of these threats: “What I feared has come upon me”, laments Job. It is a matter of imagination or fantasy. Jesus denied the power of external phenomena (the death of Lazarus, the paralysed man’s bedridden state, Pilate, etc.). We can do the same with corona, diabetes, anorexia, hypertension, etc. But if I change the cause, the effect changes. But the realisation does not change the picture abruptly. The threat takes its time and only reluctantly gives in. Its fundamental powerlessness does not mean that you cannot be “devoured” by it. But ultimately we come out of the furnace unscathed because we have not given up the unity we have regained with our spiritual guidance.
“Whoever holds on to perfection [self-realisation of one’s own divinity, unity with the soul], poisonous snakes do not sting him.”
(Tao Te King, 55)
The human drama on this planet consists in the misunderstanding of the various references in the wisdom writings, because evil such as accident, poverty, illness, enmity and war does not really exist as a principle at all. It exists only as an image, as seduction. It exists only as a provocation to doubt the idea of creation. The evil of this world only exists because people see and believe that there can be evil in this world and that it also manifests itself.
In other words, the moment I recognise evil merely as an appearance that tries to mislead, for the reason that it cannot be part of creation, it cannot become reality for me and must dissolve. However, if I believe that it can really threaten me and become dangerous to me, it unfolds its terrible destructive power.
Homer gave this situation the immortal figure of the sirens, who cannot harm anyone unless they fall into their clutches. Goethe gave the serpent’s temptation the form of Mephisto, who has been given the task by the “Lord” of trying to distract Faust from his search for closeness to God. The Doctor is to be led into the abyss of de-spiritualised, purely material faith. In other words, Mephisto has no power at all to dissuade Faust from the path of redemption; he can only tempt him to do so. Consequently, Goethe limits the devil’s “work” to “teasing” (Prologue in Heaven). Mephisto cannot do anything evil himself, Faust must become the perpetrator. If he were to ignore Mephisto and think nothing evil, fearful or greedy, nothing evil could happen.
It is not without reason that the theme of seduction can be found in abundance in the world of fairy tales, whether in Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf and the seven little goats, Little Brother and Little Sister, Hansel and Gretel, the bear skinner, the devil and his grandmother, Snow White and many others. The temptation can also be found in medieval epics such as Parzival during his childhood. But all these testimonies with a spiritual core are not only about seduction and thus about deviation from the path to spiritual identity, but also about its consequences and, above all, about the powerlessness of resisting it: The evil mother-in-law just doesn’t get to the goal of ruining Snow White.
Ugly Witch Giving Red Apple. Vectoral Illustration. White Background Isolated. iStockphoto-1131251454
Young people becoming involved in criminal activity. iStockphoto-475857705
When the Buddha – like Agent Smith in the film “Matrix I” – sees the world as one of suffering, he is describing the symptom. But in principle it is “only” one of seduction to suffering. Through seduction, man is supposed to ignore the goal “YOUR will be done” and realise the ego deviation “My will be done” – this is the only reason why there are wars. They should accept evil as an independent component of reality and as unchangeable. Seduction should lead us to believe that our world is objective instead of recognising its dependence on our consciousness. And under no circumstances should we recognise the powerlessness of evil.
But evil or suffering is also an instrument of escape from the vale of tears.
The sentence from the Lord’s Prayer “And lead us not into temptation” is absurd for the spiritual person. A sensible version would be “And lead us into temptation.” For without temptation to deviate from the course of the soul, we would never find our way back from the world of the surface to that of the truth of principles. We would waste our lives in a linear and painful way without any prospect of further or higher development. Suffering is the whip to drive us back.
If the enemy brings up his artillery as an opponent in litigation, competition or divorce and I react, there will be war; if, on the other hand, I take this threat as theatre thunder, because I know that everything comes from God and the enemy is my neighbour and is also an expression of the divine soul within us, the bottom line is that there is peace. If I try to escape my maintenance obligations because I do not know the soul’s responsibility for my provision, the arm of the law will eventually catch me; but if I shrug off these apparent restrictions in my household budget and trust in my divine provision (see chapter 9), the level of my standard of living will remain the same without restriction.
The question of the meaning of human life can only be solved by recognising the true nature of evil. It only feigns power. We are tempted, enticed, seduced to believe in evil instead of relying on the protection of our inner God and the provision he provides. The spiritual reality with its laws overrides the material reality, just as federal laws break state laws (see the Hessian state constitution, in which the death penalty is still enshrined). We live in a world where most people have accepted the embedded seduction. But how could Jesus have taught to laugh in the face of sickness, just get up and walk away? Incidentally, he also never tried to strike at the evil, e.g. to fight the storm, but simply said: “Shut up!” “Lift yourself up!”, “Step forward!”, “Stand up!”, etc. and thus rejected the evil as an attempt to manipulate his own consciousness.
To put it very harshly: the incomprehensible human suffering would be completely superfluous if we recognised evil as a bogeyman, as an illusory giant and as an attempt to incite us to act on it. Then, with spiritual awareness and appropriate experience, we can simply smile at its martial appearance: “… it won’t hit you.”
This sounds like a slap in the face to the countless people who live a life of great suffering, who are confined to bed or a wheelchair in agony, who have to live with an artificial anus or with disfigurements, who are homeless, in chronic unbearable pain or who are subjected to torture, rape, bombs or ethnic mass murder. And yet it is enough to get up and walk away with the corresponding spiritual awareness of the omnipotence within, as Jesus made unmistakably clear. The infinite torment is nothing other than a symptom of the equally infinite distance to one’s own soul, which makes itself known in this way and wants to persuade the sufferer to return.
Only if Odysseus were to “approach” the sirens would they tear him apart (12th canto, 39-54, 173-197). Homer uses the terms “listen for them” and “touch their dwelling” and describes the surrounding mountains of bones of those who have fallen into their trap. This is precisely the case with Faust; he listens to them, falls for the temptations of power, conquest, amusement and violence and consequently wreaks bloody havoc. In this respect, Homer’s epic with its mountains of bones, Jesus’ appearance before Pilate and also Goethe’s drama prove to be works of enlightenment for people of every age.
Not falling for the sirens, however, is not something that can be pulled off the cuff in real life. Odysseus even has to be tied to the ship’s mast. (The mast is the symbol for the antenna pointing “upwards”, the vertical to God.) With the symbolism of being tied up, Homer shows that the efforts to make contact with the soul and to recognise one’s own identity must be extremely intense and narrow in order to rob the ego of its freedom of movement. Without a direct dialogue with his own intuition, with the “goddess” who prepared him for the “sirens”, the temptation cannot be overcome.
The price of immunity from suffering is high, it is not free. To put it in symbolic terms: The return to paradisiacal conditions is not made easy for us; after all, two heavily armed angels guard the entrance. And to achieve a dialogue with the goddess, you have to invest a lot of strength, time and resilience.
The credibility of the portrayal of these contexts is in a poor state, as there are not very many people who want to take the risk of ignoring the threats of evil, perhaps even allowing themselves to be “devoured” by it for a time and perhaps even writing about it. However, the ultimate appropriation by the apparent evil is in reality its very last act of strength to perhaps still prevent its defeat. The spiritual seeker is only led into this final rebellion when his self-knowledge as a son of God and his resilience have developed to such an extent that they are sufficient for this acid test. There are enough symbols for this showdown, starting with Little Red Riding Hood, who emerges unscathed (!) from the wolf’s belly, as well as Jonah from the whale’s belly or Joseph from the cistern. Agent K in “Men in Black I” allows himself to be devoured by the cockroach, enabling him to blow it up with his weapon, thereby surviving and becoming a saviour for the humans. Quite unsymbolically, Gandhi allows himself to be “devoured” many times by the British occupying power, i.e. imprisoned, thereby revealing their role as evildoers and becoming the saviour of hundreds of millions of Indians. The same applies to Quakers such as George Fox in 17th century England, to Maxymilian Kolbe in Auschwitz and countless very real heroes, law enforcers and life savers who allowed themselves to be “devoured”.
These lines could not have been written without the drastic experience of being led into the catastrophe with one’s eyes open, equipped with the knowledge of the impotence of evil, but without the corresponding experience, i.e. without the ultimate proof. Then comes the painful experience of feeling one’s way over the abyss step by step on the edge of a sword and being led out unscathed. (Another formulation of Hindu wisdom is that of “dancing on the heads of serpents.”)
I suffered the loss of everything I had, the loss of my family life with my partner and children, the loss of my job, income and the roof over my head, combined with unbearable debt and legal and financial attackers from all sides. The almost hourly “conversation with the goddess Athena” was my basis for the strength to wait, to endure the terrible suffering, to remain steadfast and to watch how my inner guidance would solve the problem.
I was not completely free of fear, but I was able to go through the challenges with confidence, constantly supported by the encouragement of the inner voice. The unharmed re-emergence from the lion’s den was the demonstration of the truth about the context described, the powerlessness of evil.
The sea monster spat me out again; the “daily dying” had reached a temporary peak. (Homer puts the words into the mouth of the goddess Kirke that Odysseus will “taste death twice”). After this rebirth and a period of rehabilitation, the supercompensation began to take effect, and in the following decade I realised that I was doing better than ever before, both in terms of consciousness and materially, and above all that my life had taken on even more meaning. If I had not experienced the powerlessness of evil myself – several times later – all the biblical and other impressive parables and symbols would have been worth nothing.
The external powers do not lose their influence altogether. Because evil only loses its power through a collision with the power of the soul, its loss of power only applies to those who have consciously faced up to the experience of the impotence of worldly power. This is always the result of severe inner and outer conflicts in which the old belief in external power factors is shattered by the new experiences of their powerlessness. In the outside world, it would not be the case, for example, that you are a soldier on the front line and the bullets bounce off you, but that you don’t even get there with spiritual awareness. The suffering of others continues there. After all, it is there to lead to awareness.
The knowledge of the powerlessness of evil must not be used. It has already happened that spiritual aspirants, in the exuberance of this realisation, decided to go to a harbour bar and start a fight there: “Nothing can happen to us!” This ends badly because the ego wants to take the place of the soul.
The worldly power of evil is immense, but only because our collective consciousness has allowed it to develop in this way. It cannot distinguish the fact that although evil appears, it does not have the power it claims to have. After Homer, Plato, Buddha, Shankara, Jesus, Job, Lao Tse and of course the Gita, hardly anyone in the Middle Ages emphasised the impotence of evil. It was not until the modern era in the middle of the 19th century that translations of Eastern texts began to appear. Subsequently, the toothlessness of evil was taken up by spiritual teachers from North America, first by Mary Baker Eddy (Science and Health. German and English), Joel S. Goldsmith and their successors such as the Stephensons and others.
Impotence does not mean that evil avoids people who are aware of their impotence. On the contrary, it wants to take them by the horns. This means that they already feel its effects when they are plagued by pain, when a divorce weighs heavily on them, when the loss of their income causes them pain. This is precisely the testing situation in which it is important not to be afraid right now, not to allow yourself to worry and to rely on the guidance of the High Ego. This is tested extensively. The ego programme then fires broadside after broadside at the impudent person who dares to test and see through the thunder of the Nazarene’s statement that Pilate actually has no power. It makes him suffer for it and risks the truth seeker seeing through and enduring this suffering. This means that worldly power does have an effect on the spiritual seeker, but only as affliction and not as destruction. The affliction is temporary and Mara has to troll.
From these experiences it becomes clear that there is no such thing as the power of evil. Then the meaning of the powerful statement “Fear not!” becomes clear: there is nothing to fear. Then you can stop fearing your cancer. This does not mean to stop trying to cure it, e.g. to give up immunisation or cancer treatment. Mohammed is credited with the statement that you should trust in Allah, but still tie up the camel. It is about leading the inner struggle to success and trusting that and how the inner voice will then lead the outer action: “I can do nothing of myself, the Father within me does the works.” You are then free of responsibility, have passed on the problem-solving to the inner genius and take the next steps as a tool and as a co-worker.
The libretto to Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute” calls this the test of fire and the test of water. These terms are obviously borrowed from the esoteric tradition of the late Middle Ages. The trial by fire refers to the burning of the veil that obscures the essence of the phenomena. This applies in particular to the looking through the mask of the outer man to his soul.
The water test refers to the situation that every spiritual seeker finds himself in when all material means of salvation have fallen away and the initiate has no other choice but to cling to his inner God. The classic example is the hopeless situation of Odysseus in the breakers of the sea whipped up by Poseidon, in which, clinging to the last beam of his raft, he follows the advice of the sea goddess, lets go (!) (cf. Hermann Hesse: Klein und Wagner) and jumps into the raging waters (Fifth Canto, 339-375). The sea goddess calls: “Trust me! Jump!” This shows the character of the situation, namely that of a trial, that of a temptation as well as that of the impotence of the threat.
Only when we have steadfastly maintained that there is no secondary power apart from that of our soul and therefore, metaphorically speaking, Mephisto has to meekly admit that – including himself – there is nothing other than divine omnipotence, does the darkness dissolve in the bright light of realisation. A helpful mantra is always that God is also on the other side!
We are not under the umbrella when we fear external powers such as the authorities, medical findings, burglars, attacks, war refugees, job loss, etc. Then we are subject to the vicissitudes of the world of good and evil. If we fear the power of man, accidents and bad weather, we reap them. It is the dilemma of everyday people that they believe in earthly powers because they were born into this belief and their surface experience. For them, evil is very real, and that is true. In this respect, our earthly experience of life is our seducer.
There is no parallel power. Everything is omnipotence, everything (!) “… comes from God”, to quote Jakob Böhme once again. Therefore, evil is not an original reality, only for the people who have made it so by falling into its clutches. For those with the looking through of its mirage nature, it is not only not a power, it is not even there. Only occasionally do you realise in retrospect that all the unpleasant, bad or dangerous conditions that people live in, from weather disasters to viral epidemics, divorces and financial collapses to job loss and so on, hardly ever touched you.
But people, even if they have retained a residual reference to God, are unconsciously convinced of other twin powers in addition to omnipotence. In most cases, however, they no longer have any spiritual contact at all. They do not see the function of evil, which is there for our higher development.
Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones sings forebodingly in “Sympathy for the Devil”:
“But what’s confusing you,
is just the nature of my game.”
Without evil and suffering, we would continue to waste our lives without understanding, meaning and purpose. It has the sense that it always “creates the good.” It is always there, but still substantially void. Without evil, there would be no way to overcome it. This is dealt with comedically in the film “Devilish” with Liz Hurley.
As far as evil people are concerned, evil does not originate in them, but in the collective awareness that there is evil and, above all, evil people. This includes the belief that there is something outside of God and that it has power. And this power always appears as the power of lack and evil.
Accordingly, the effects are also composed of good and evil. The worst thing that can happen to people – and this is exactly what happens to them constantly and fundamentally – is to attribute power to a circumstance or a person instead of assuming that their power originates from the general and their own consciousness and has no influence on me as a mere trousers but equipped with my catapult* of spiritual power. The Pilates of this world can do what they like: My recognition of the non-power of external influences causes their failure for me. Their power then shatters on a pebble. This also applies to earthly norms, rules and laws. This does not mean that we can ignore them at will. On the contrary, they must be observed just like everyone else. But in cases of conflict, when worldly and spiritual ideals collide, I disregard the former: when the call-up to the army comes, I obey it, but when it comes to killing, I don’t. The Silesian mystic writes about this:
“The Holy One, what he does,
does nothing according to the commandment.
He does it sincerely
out of love for God.”
(Cherubinischer Wandersmann. Book 5, 276)
Similar statements can be found in the anonymous author of the Theologia Deutsch, the “Franckforter”, chapter 30, or in St Paul’s letter to the Romans. Nothing can be said or written about the spectre of the power of evil without the experience of its incapacity. This can only be done by boldly venturing into the unknown like Columbus. From a worldly point of view, such a step into a confusing and dangerous situation is risky. But anyone who consciously stands their ground in a situation in which the army of cancer diagnoses, bailiffs, job losses, threats from lawyers, loan cancellations, eviction notices, etc. pounce on you and then bounce ineffectively off the knowledge of their powerlessness – albeit in conjunction with really critical phases – the threat from the giant Goliath has become obsolete. He gets up, takes his bed and leaves. In Jewish wisdom, this is symbolised by the situation of Moses, who stands with his people on the seashore, with Pharaoh’s chariots already in sight and for whom the sea opens up and forms a lane for his escape. For those who have experienced that this actually works, the circumstances change. This means that when I recognise evil as an inflated conditional reality, it begins to disappear for me. For those who understand that the world is only and exclusively good, even very good (Gen. 1:31), it actually becomes only-good.
This does not mean not wanting to recognise evil. Rather, it means understanding evil as a phenomenon and a product that has arisen and been activated on the basis of an acquired consciousness and can be deactivated by a radical change of consciousness. It does not exist independently.
The children sitting in front of the stage and watching Punch and Judy beat up the crocodile believe the scene to be reality at the moment. Adults occasionally do the same when they crouch down in their cinema seats as the truck on the screen races towards them. Of course, Punch and Judy and the crocodile are actually real, but it is the conditional reality of the puppet, that of the surface. The children do not realise that the puppets are guided by the puppeteer’s hands. It is the same with people. The hand in the puppet is the substance level, that which is constant, that which remains. The stage is dismantled and the puppets disappear into storage after the performance, but the puppeteer’s hands remain. The substance withdraws from view, while it appears as an apparition in countless variations:
“I am not visible to everyone,
because I am veiled by ** Maya’s semblance,
so that the world wears me confused
no longer sees me because of a thousand masks.”
(Bhagavad Gita 7:25)
Thus every human being is on the one hand an expression of divine life and on the other hand an expression of his personal consciousness in a mixture of good and evil. Evil cannot exist in “God’s kingdom”, i.e. the developed spiritual consciousness, because the world is “very good”. A person is free to decide whether and when to choose which lifestyle within the broad spectrum between very bad and very good. As they have learnt to accept that there is also evil with its immense power due to the evil that surrounds them, the manifestations of evil become reality. They have then found a stable place on the hard drive of our consciousness and are expressed accordingly on the monitor of our concrete life.
- David’s catapult corresponds to Odysseus’ bow and arrow. As far as the bow is concerned, it is no coincidence that the hero in Kubrick’s film “2001 – A Space Odyssey” is called Bowman.
** Maya: In Hinduism, goddess of illusion who conceals the life behind life.
The essence of evil is its nothingness. If I can perceive evil as merely an appearance and persistently reject it, it dissolves. The real evil is the temptation to believe in the worldly surface and to distract from the essence behind it. This is already encapsulated in the story of creation: what was a problem for Eve in her dialogue with the serpent did not exist at all. She interpreted it as a problem at the instigation of the serpent, took it into her consciousness and thus helped it to become reality.
A classic example of this connection is the hypochondriac, the imaginary sick person who searches so intensively for symptoms of illnesses that they increasingly become a painful reality for him. He does this because his low self-esteem literally drives him to find some kind of pain so that he can feel it and thus himself. Another example of the power of consciousness is the effect (!) of placebos.
It is of course difficult to imagine explaining the fundamental nullity of evil to a parent who has lost their daughter to a sex offender and naturally categorises her into good and evil. This can only be done spiritually and is also multi-layered in that life is indestructible, that there are karmic destinies, that the exclusive orientation towards the material surface is misleading, that there is a way of leaving the good-evil life and that grief is cruelly also an indicator of the distance from one’s own spiritual essence.
How evil dissolves takes a wide variety of forms. In any case, the prerequisite is always not to react inwardly (!) accordingly. This does not mean not to act. But the action prompted by the soul only takes place when it recognises the appropriate path and the appropriate time (kairos). If, for example, the situation is precarious after a financial collapse or job loss, you will not rush into action and frantically try out every conceivable external avenue. Instead, you will focus your consciousness inwards and concentrate on seeking:
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God … and all things … shall be added unto you.”
The “kingdom of God” refers to the consciousness that trustingly relies on the soul’s guidance and supply impulses and waits until a suitable constellation appears at the right time to solve the problem.
You can certainly do research while waiting, but the starting signal and the type of action and the determination of the time is the responsibility of the soul and not the mind. You are not the responsible agent, but a co-operative executor.
In this respect, recognising the nature of evil is crucial for success or overcoming it. If I manage to shrug my shoulders and smile at every evil apparition, the threat will dissipate. If I break down on the road late at night with engine trouble or in snowdrifts and have the awareness of being taken care of (see chapter 9), I will be taken care of, sometimes in ways that are unusual “coincidences”. The same goes for my bankruptcy, alimony after my divorce trial, or my cancer, which fade with my awareness of protection from evil by the God within. If I am bullied at my workplace, my inner strength causes me to see my opponents in a spiritual light and thus ensures lasting harmonisation, even if this sometimes only materialises after some time:
“Affirm Tao [primordial principle, world spirit, Brahman, God, Nirvana] in your neighbour,
and your Te [its revelation, soul power] promotes fullness …” (Tao Te King, II, 54)
By worldly standards, this is a kind of supernatural power. However, it is not one of the person, but that of the divine soul. This is symbolically expressed in the film “Matrix”, in which the members of the ship’s crew have abilities that the Matrix people can only marvel at. Morpheus, Neo, Trinity and their friends from the “Nebuchadnezzar” have achieved something that is the fate of mankind as a whole. They have transcended the boundaries of the matrix world, i.e. the earthly vale of tears. They can – consciously – move in the surface world or break free from it. The protagonist in the film “The Truman Show” tries to realise the same destiny, i.e. to break through the boundaries of his narrowly limited surface world.
Some mystics have aptly described people as sleepwalkers who walk through the world with their eyes open but are in a kind of twilight state, i.e. a lowered consciousness, which prevents them from recognising the real world beyond the surface.
Greek “myéein” = to close: Mystics are those who close their eyes to block out external impressions for a time in order to be able to take in inner ones. Mysticism has nothing to do with parapsychology or spiritualism, but refers to people within a religion (which exists in every religion) who “know the effect of the soul in man” (Karl Rahner) and who have had an experience of God of some kind. “Mystic” (has nothing to do with “mysterious”) is a term for people who have a direct experience of God and/or a kind of “direct line” to the inner divine soul, such as Angelus Silesius or Jeanne d’Arc with her “voice” (see Chapter 5).
The task of every human being, in addition to the call to primarily fill the consciousness with the power of the soul, is to eradicate the belief in evil and its power. Omnipotence excludes the possibility of evil having power. It only exists because we abuse the dominion we have been given over the world by allowing and even cultivating the belief in evil. Our media environment seems to consist only of ball games, pornography, horror films, crime thrillers and excessive reports of catastrophes. Evil is a mirage that can only rage in the world because we have lost the knowledge of the insignificance of this illusory giant. Anyone who believes in evil and therefore in another power besides God does not understand the principle of omnipotence.
As long as I am convinced that the earth is a disc, I will be careful not to go far out to sea because I will ultimately tip over on the edge and therefore believe in the threat. If I do not or no longer have this conviction, I can sail far out to sea like Columbus.
The vernacular has a rough idea of this connection when it warns against “shouting” or “painting the devil on the wall”. Because when I express threatening negative fears (“I’ll fail anyway”, “I won’t make it anyway”, “there’s no chance for me there anyway”, etc.), I charge my consciousness with negative substance and contribute to negative things happening. The control of my reality lies in my hands: “I am the master of my fate.” (E. W. Henley: Invictus)
Psychology recognises part of this truth with its element of so-called “self-fulfilling prophecy”. We are the creators of our destiny.
“You shall not worry …,
what will we eat? …
What shall we clothe ourselves with?
This is what the heathen (!) seek. …
Seek first the kingdom of God,
and all these things will be added to you.”
It is difficult to disregard worldly solutions and ways of solving problems and to seek first only divine grace.
Imagine that the accumulation of a mountain of debt equal to two or three years’ salary leads to a financial collapse that means ruin. With spiritual awareness, it can develop in such a way, for example, that the person concerned takes in his sick sister, the rent and other costs are suddenly halved and thus the collapse does not occur or is equalised.
Erwin Reisner once succinctly summarised the connections between the orientation of consciousness and the consequences as follows: “No images, no devil!”
However, this state “ane bilde” (Meister Eckhart) (it means: “without images”) does not fall from the sky, but must be achieved through spiritual endeavour, but the quote is apt.
The power of grace manifests itself not only in the great role models. The veil of the world of forms is torn in many different ways:
*During an overtaking manoeuvre next to the middle of a lorry with a trailer, oncoming traffic suddenly appears. The driver can no longer overtake completely, nor can he reverse by braking. A gust of wind hits him and pushes him in front of the lorry.
*A young woman is diagnosed with metastasised breast cancer. Prognosis: six months to go. A knowledgeable homeopath gives her her type remedy in the power of a thousand. Two weeks later, at her next doctor’s appointment, all her symptoms have disappeared. The doctors are baffled and speak of “spontaneous remission”.
*On a rain-soaked road, the car skids after a bend, crashes sideways into a tree, rolls over on its longitudinal axis and lands on its four wheels in the field behind the deep ditch running parallel to the road. The driver gets out unharmed.
*An evening return journey on the motorway at a time when there were no mobile phones. A sick child in the back seat. It is pitch dark and there is driving snow. Suddenly a rear tyre loses air pressure. The spare tyre is also deflated. A metre from the driver’s door, the lorry speeds through the driving snow. After a few minutes, a Yellow Angel stops behind the car and is able to repair the damage.
*A storm approaches a youth camp with high wind speeds, but does not arrive. The following day, it turns out that it has split into two wedges and has passed to the left and right of the camp. The damage some distance to the left and right of the camp is considerable.
*After taking over an important group trip with young people, the impulse comes to cancel this commitment. It is taken over by other trip leaders. Towards the end of the trip in question, the travellers there are prevented from returning with the children as a result of force majeure (volcanic eruption), which cancels all air traffic in Europe, and get into considerable complications and financial difficulties due to visa difficulties and a longer forced stay abroad.
Anyone who has had these and even more massive experiences, because the awareness of being protected under the umbrella has helped them to stop believing in Maya, will only be forced to remain calm by Maya’s horror.
We don’t realise that we have already been protected for a long time. It’s like being in a house in bright sunshine. We ourselves have pulled down all the blinds and complain that it is dark, perhaps even pray that the sun will shine and take all possible measures against the darkness in the house, but do not pull up the blinds and do not let the light in. People are always looking for something that is effective against (!) evil instead of drawing knowledge from the answer to Pilate. They do not recognise the false coinage of the serpent, although answers to the question of meaning and power are given at all times in all cultures in legends, sagas, epics, heroic poems, dramas, collections of sayings, revelatory texts, novels, fairy tales, spiritual stories or parables of humanity (such as Faust). Above all, however, the deeds of real, concrete heroes such as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Father Kolbe, Joao de Jesus, the man who conquered the desert, Rabin, etc., etc., emphasise the statements of truth in the holy scriptures. The world is already perfect, it is only through the human consciousness of good and evil that it is permeated by evil. Through the consciousness of only-good, its paradisiacal state emerges again: it is an intellectual act.
When I light a lamp in a pitch-black cellar room, there is no more darkness, the brighter the less. Lighting a light corresponds to recognising the divine presence within me.
As far as the character of darkness is concerned, what happens to it deserves special attention: After all, it does not go somewhere else, but is simply no longer there. This expresses the principle of evil: It is void, it is an apparition that fades and simply dissolves as soon as I find myself under the umbrella. The light does nothing against the darkness, does not beat it up. It simply doesn’t exist in the presence of light. (In everyday life, however, it usually takes the form of gradually fading away).
For most people, the wick is snapped off or only a small sparkling remnant glows. Then, of course, the presence of darkness is powerful. This is the consequence of the collective overall programme of non-unity between soul and human being and also applies to those who are devout Christians, Buddhists, etc. and are dogmatically entrenched in their religion, have no contact whatsoever with the inner voice and are therefore just as cut off as everyone else.
As I said, the principle of the toothlessness of evil is clearly illustrated by illness. People believe that their organs and their disorders influence life. But it is the other way round: life – via consciousness – influences the organs and causes the disorders. That is why there are no illnesses under the umbrella of spiritual consciousness. There are many attacks for the spiritual seeker, but none can be sustained as long as the consciousness of its character is persistently maintained as a spectre.
A sufferer immediately develops victim consciousness because he believes that he has simply been caught somehow. In rare cases, smokers do recognise why they have been struck down by smoker’s leg or lung cancer. Or they think that it won’t affect them. Or they simply couldn’t resist the temptation of the addiction. In any case, however, he was a culprit in that he failed to heed the many calls to scrutinise life with its good-evil structure. There would have been more than enough occasions and impulses from enlightened socialisation and mass media diversity.
Illness is a product of consciousness, whether conscious or not. If our minds did not recognise something like illness from birth, there would be none. However, everyone experiences childhood illnesses, whereby an awareness of their insignificance cannot be assumed. However, everyone also experiences that these illnesses disappear again, i.e. that they can only have a temporary effect and cannot prevail. The next step could then be taken in adult life and the dependency of being ill could be recognised. Hypochondriacs and placebos point the way in different ways.
Jules Romains’ story “Knock or the Triumph of Medicine” is revealing. In it, the old village doctor is replaced by a young successor who diagnoses the people who have been essentially healthy until they are all more or less ill. There is no illness under the mental umbrella, only attacks that usually disappear as quickly as they came. This is the background to the Nazarene’s statement about getting up and simply walking away.
Incidentally, anyone who believes in the sharp teeth of evil also blatantly violates the first commandment of Christianity, which advises against “having other gods”. Since in this context God is a synonym for rulers, those who take evil at face value violate the omnipotence principle of the Creator God.
All assertions about powerlessness are meaningless as long as one does not want to and has not experienced the illusion of the power of evil. Until then, this is only a working hypothesis, regardless of whether Krishna, Jesus, Buddha and others say so. You only have certainty when you are confronted with evil and then take the step of putting the above assertions into practice. You search for inner dialogue, begin to meditate and practice silence of thought in order to be able to hear the gentle voice. At the same time, you acquire more and more spiritual knowledge. Slowly, very slowly, the character of evil is revealed as a work of deception. At first you can’t believe it despite your initial experiences. It is simply too monstrous. But then situations arise in which you realise that there is now an opportunity to put the thesis to the test. These are always test arrangements that are associated with risks, but initially relatively small ones. Anyone who has risked and mastered this leap into the deep end is increasingly exposed to further risks and then recognises the truth revealed to Isaiah through further successful experiences:
“Every weapon that is prepared against you shall not prosper.”
Ignorance of the vain nature of evil is the cause of the sanctity of our planet. And it is a titanic task to replace these programmes of good and above all of evil with the guidance of our actions by the divine soul. We then gain a direct line to “my voice” (Jeanne d’Arc).
In the Rajjusarpa Nyaya, a parable, Hindu philosophy characterises the nature of evil:
A man comes home in the evening. He steps on a snake in the front garden, jumps to the side, feels a pain and realises that the snake has bitten him. He knows it was a poisonous snake and calls the priest. He feels his life forces slowly leaving him. The wise woman of the village comes by and looks at the wound. Then she takes a lamp and goes into the front garden. There she sees a rope next to the rose bush. She goes back and tells the man that he will not die, that it was not a snake but a rope and that it was not a snakebite but a wound from the thorns.
(according to wiki.yoga-vidya.de)
Rope, close up. iStock-470915818
But anyone who knows the character of evil knows that the disastrous situation that everyone takes all too seriously is not actually a poisonous snake, but a rope that only looks bad and that we have perceived as an evil and existential threat in the twilight (symbolising the clouded state of consciousness without deep vision).
You can visualise the fake character of evil if you realise in critical situations that the “enemies” you are facing have the same spiritual essence inside as you do. This harmonises discord because, under the condition of an enlightened consciousness, mutual injuries are pushed back and made to disappear completely. Two fingers on the same hand do not hurt each other, only people do that. I always have the choice of either saying to the tumour: “I hate you” or “I am afraid of you” or: “I know and love (in the sense of recognising) you who want to take me forward.”
Anyone who takes it upon themselves to apply this realisation to everyday conflicts will experience miracle after miracle.
It sounds unworldly, pitiless and arrogant to describe the many dangers, threats and the endless daily suffering of people – and children – as a mirage. It seems to be a mockery of the suffering people. And yet there is a reason why David can face a giant and Jesus dares to tell Pilate’s mighty worldly power that his power is basically a phantom. Because in the “realm of divine consciousness”, the scarecrow is exposed as such. The threats then collapse. The seemingly insurmountable waters of the sea have then opened up. The only answer to worldly imperfection is spiritual perfection.
“The one who has grasped life walks through the land
without fear of rhinoceros and tiger.
He goes through the midst of the enemy without armour or weapons.
The unicorn and the tiger do not find
a vulnerable spot,
and the weapons do not know
how to hit him fatally.
Why is that? Because he is invulnerable.” (Tao Te King 50)
Anyone who believes in the substance of disease violates the principle:
“You shall have no other gods [i.e. rulers such as diseases, etc.] beside me!”
On this basis of self-knowledge, we can save ourselves if we recognise the puffing up of the paper tiger. How can we fear evil when there is only God? In a world created by God there can be no evil, but in a world permeated by human consciousness there can be. If we disregard the power of the soul and replace it with that of a material consciousness, we have opened the door to evil. The only mistake we can make is to negate the life behind life, to forget our divine identity and thereby give evil sharp teeth.
The devil is what we make of him.