Theos-Talk Archives (October 2004 Message tt00320)

Oct 19 2004

Yes Jerry:

The statement is as quoted. But, what is its cause? 

Dallas

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I send you HPB's article on the ORIGIN OF EVIL. Perhaps it has something of
value in it. I notice it considers some of the Buddha's teachings in it.
 
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THE ORIGIN OF EVIL

Article by H. P. Blavatsky

THE problem of the origin of evil can be philosophically approached only if
the archaic Indian formula is taken as the basis of the argument. 

Ancient wisdom alone solves the presence of the universal fiend in a
satisfactory way. It attributes the birth of Kosmos and the evolution of
life to the breaking asunder of primordial, manifested UNITY, into
plurality, or the great illusion of form. 

HOMOGENEITY having transformed itself into Heterogeneity, contrasts have
naturally been created; hence sprang what we call EVIL, which thenceforward
reigned supreme in this "Vale of Tears." 

Materialistic Western philosophy (so misnamed) has not failed to profit by
this grand metaphysical tenet. ...But now steps in materialistic Pessimism,
a teaching which is neither philosophy nor science, but only a deluge of
meaningless words. Pessimism, in its latest development, having ceased to be
pantheistic, having wedded itself to materialism, prepares to make capital
out of the old Indian formula. But the atheistic pessimist soars no higher
than the terrestrial homogeneous plasm of the Darwinists. For him the ultima
thule is earth and matter, and he sees, beyond the prima materia, only an
ugly void, an empty nothingness. .... 

Materialism patronizes Indian metaphors and imagery now. In a new work upon
the subject by Dr. Mainlander, "Pessimism and Progress," one learns that
Indian Pantheism and German Pessimism are identical; and that it is the
breaking up of homogeneous matter into heterogeneous material, the
transition from uniformity to multiformity, which resulted in so unhappy a
universe. 

Saith Pessimism: 

This [transition] is precisely the original mistake, the primordial sin,
which the whole creation has now to expiate by heavy suffering; it is just
that sin, which, having launched into existence all that lives, plunged it
thereby into the abysmal depths of evil and misery, to escape from which
there is but one means possible, i.e., by putting an end to being itself. 

This interpretation of the Eastern formula, attributing to it the first idea
of escaping the misery of life by "putting an end to being"--whether that
being is viewed as applicable to the whole Kosmos, or only to individual
life--is a gross misconception. 

The Eastern pantheist, whose philosophy teaches him to discriminate between
Being or ESSE and conditioned existence, would hardly indulge in so absurd
an idea as the postulation of such an alternative. He knows he can put an
end to form alone, not to being--and that only on this plane of terrestrial
illusion. 

True, he knows that by killing out in himself Tanha (the unsatisfied desire
for existence, or the "will to live")--he will thus gradually escape the
curse of rebirth and conditioned existence. But he knows also that he cannot
kill, or "put an end," even to his own little life except as a personality,
which after all is but a change of dress. And believing but in One Reality,
which is eternal Be-ness, the "causeless CAUSE" from which he has exiled
himself into a world of forms, he regards the temporary and progressing
manifestations of it in the state of Maya (change or illusion), as the
greatest evil, truly; but at the same time as a process in nature, as
unavoidable as are the pangs of birth. It is the only means by which he can
pass from limited and conditioned lives of sorrow into eternal life, or into
that absolute "Be-ness," which is so graphically expressed in the Sanskrit
word SAT. 


The "Pessimism" of the Hindu or Buddhist Pantheist is metaphysical,
abstruse, and philosophical. The idea that matter and its Protean
manifestations are the source and origin of universal evil and sorrow is a
very old one, though Gautama Buddha was the first to give it its definite
expression. 

But the great Indian Reformer assuredly never meant to make of it a handle
for the modern pessimist to get hold of, or a peg for the materialist to
hang his distorted and pernicious tenets upon! The Sage and Philosopher, who
sacrificed himself for Humanity by living for it, in order to save it, by
teaching men to see in the sensuous existence of matter misery alone, had
never in his deep philosophical mind any idea of offering a premium for
suicide; his efforts were to release mankind from too strong an attachment
to life, which is the chief cause of Selfishness--hence the creator of
mutual pain and suffering. In his personal case, Buddha left us an example
of fortitude to follow; in living, not in running away from life. His
doctrine shows evil immanent, not in matter, which is eternal, but in the
illusions created by it: through the changes and transformations of matter
generating life--because these changes are conditioned and such life is
ephemeral. 

At the same time those evils are shown to be not only unavoidable, but
necessary. For if we would discern good from evil, light from darkness, and
appreciate the former, we can do so only through the contrasts between the
two. While Buddha's philosophy points, in its dead-letter meaning, only to
the dark side of things on this illusive plane; its esotericism, the hidden
soul of it, draws the veil aside and reveals to the Arhat all the glories of
LIFE ETERNAL in all the Homogeneousness of Consciousness and Being. Another
absurdity, no doubt, in the eyes of materialistic science and even modern
Idealism, yet a fact to the Sage and esoteric Pantheist. 

Nevertheless, the root idea that evil is born and generated by the ever
increasing complications of the homogeneous material, which enters into form
and differentiates more and more as that form becomes physically more
perfect, has an esoteric side to it which seems to have never occurred to
the modern pessimist. Its dead-letter aspect, however, became the subject of
speculation with every ancient thinking nation. 

Even in India the primitive thought, underlying the formula already cited,
has been disfigured by Sectarianism, and has led to the ritualistic, purely
dogmatic observances of the Hatha Yogis, in contradistinction to the
philosophical Vedantic Raja Yoga. Pagan and Christian exoteric speculation,
and even mediĉval monastic asceticism, have extracted all they could from
the originally noble idea, and made it subservient to their narrow-minded
sectarian views. Their false conceptions of matter have led the Christians
from the earliest day to identify woman with Evil and
matter--notwithstanding the worship paid by the Roman Catholic Church to the
Virgin. 


But the latest application of the misunderstood Indian formula by the
Pessimists in Germany is quite original, and rather unexpected, as we shall
see. .... German ingenuity has contrived, by means of scientific paradoxes
and much sophistry, to give it a semblance of philosophical truth. 

The old Indian tenet itself has not escaped litigation at the hands of modem
pessimism. The happy discoverer of the theory, that the origin of evil dates
from the protoplasmic Amoeba, which divided itself for procreation, and thus
lost its immaculate homogeneity, has laid claim to the Aryan archaic formula
in his new volume. While extolling its philosophy and the depth of ancient
conceptions, he declares that it ought to be viewed "as the most profound
truth precogitated and robbed by the ancient sages from modern thought"! 

It thus follows that the deeply religious Pantheism of the Hindu and
Buddhist philosopher, and the occasional vagaries of the pessimistic
materialist, are placed on the same level and identified by "modern
thought." 

The impassable chasm between the two is ignored. It matters little, it
seems, that the Pantheist, recognizing no reality in the manifested Kosmos,
and regarding it as a simple illusion of his senses, has to view his own
existence also as only a bundle of illusions. 

When, therefore, he speaks of the means of escaping from the sufferings of
objective life, his view of those sufferings, and his motive for putting an
end to existence are entirely different from those of the pessimistic
materialist. For him, pain as well as sorrow are illusions, due to
attachment to this life, and ignorance. 

Therefore he strives after eternal, changeless life, and absolute
consciousness in the state of Nirvana; whereas the European pessimist,
taking the "evils" of life as realities, aspires when he has the time to
aspire after anything except those said mundane realities, to annihilation
of "being," as he expresses it. 

For the philosopher there is but one real life, Nirvanic bliss, which is a
state differing in kind, not in degree only, from that of any of the planes
of consciousness in the manifested universe. 

The Pessimist calls "Nirvana" superstition, ...He knows of, and believes in
only the direct cause of that unit, eternal and ever living, because the ONE
uncreated, or rather not evoluted. Hence all his efforts are directed toward
the speediest reunion possible with, and return to his pre-primordial
condition, after his pilgrimage through this illusive series of visionary
lives, with their unreal phantasmagoria of sensuous perceptions. 

Such pantheism can be qualified as "pessimistic" only by a believer in a
personal Providence; by one who contrasts its negation of the reality of
anything "created"--i.e., conditioned and limited-- with his own blind
unphilosophical faith.

The Oriental mind does not busy itself with extracting evil from every
radical law and manifestation of life, and multiplying every phenomenal
quantity by the units of very often imaginary evils: the Eastern Pantheist
simply submits to the inevitable, and tries to blot out from his path in
life as many "descents into rebirth" as he can, by avoiding the creation of
new Karmic causes. 

The Buddhist philosopher knows that the duration of the series of lives of
every human being--unless he reaches Nirvana "artificially" ("takes the
kingdom of God by violence," in Kabalistic parlance) -- is given,
allegorically in the forty-nine days passed by Gautama the Buddha under the
Bo-tree. And the Hindu sage is aware, in his turn, that he has to light the
first, and extinguish the forty-ninth fire before he reaches his final
deliverance. 

Knowing this, both sage and philosopher wait patiently for the natural hour
of deliverance; whereas their unlucky copyist, the European Pessimist, is
ever ready to commit, as to preach, suicide. Ignorant of the numberless
heads of the hydra of existence, he is incapable of feeling the same
philosophical scorn for life as he does for death, and of, thereby,
following the wise example given him by his Oriental brother. 

Thus, philosophic pantheism is very different from modern pessimism. The
first is based upon the correct understanding of the mysteries of being; the
latter is in reality only one more system of evil added by unhealthy fancy
to the already large sum of real social evils. In sober truth it is no
philosophy, but simply a systematic slander of life and being...No parallel
can ever be attempted between the two systems of thought. 

The seeds of evil and sorrow were indeed the earliest result and consequence
of the heterogeneity of the manifested universe. Still they are but an
illusion produced by the law of contrasts, which, as described, is a
fundamental law in nature. 

Neither good nor evil would exist were it not for the light they mutually
throw on each other. Being, under whatever form, having been observed from
the World's creation to offer these contrasts, and evil predominating in the
universe owing to Ego-ship or selfishness, the rich Oriental metaphor has
pointed to existence as expiating the mistake of nature; and the human soul
(psüche), was henceforth regarded as the scapegoat and victim of unconscious
OVER-SOUL. But it is not to Pessimism, but to Wisdom that it gave birth. 

Ignorance alone is the willing martyr, but knowledge is the master, of
natural Pessimism. Gradually, and by the process of heredity or atavism, the
latter became innate in man. It is always present in us, howsoever latent
and silent its voice in the beginning. 

Amid the early joys of existence, when we are still full of the vital
energies of youth, we are yet apt, each of us, at the first pang of sorrow,
after a failure, or at the sudden appearance of a black cloud, to accuse
life of it; to feel life a burden, and often curse our being. This shows
pessimism in our blood, but at the same time the presence of the fruits of
ignorance. 

As mankind multiplies, and with it suffering--which is the natural result of
an increasing number of units that generate it--sorrow and pain are
intensified. We live in an atmosphere of gloom and despair, but this is
because our eyes are downcast and riveted to the earth, with all its
physical and grossly material manifestations. 

If, instead of that, man proceeding on his life-journey looked--not
heavenward, which is but a figure of speech--but within himself and centered
his point of observation on the inner man, he would soon escape from the
coils of the great serpent of illusion. From the cradle to the grave, his
life would then become supportable and worth living, even in its worst
phases. 

Pessimism--that chronic suspicion of lurking evil everywhere-- is thus of a
two-fold nature, and brings fruits of two kinds. It is a natural
characteristic in physical man, and becomes a curse only to the ignorant. It
is a boon to the spiritual, inasmuch as it makes the latter turn into the
right path, and brings him to the discovery of another as fundamental a
truth; namely, that all in this world is only preparatory because
transitory. It is like a chink in the dark prison walls of earth-life,
through which breaks in a ray of light from the eternal home, which,
illuminating the inner senses, whispers to the prisoner in his shell of clay
of the origin and the dual mystery of our being. 

At the same time, it is a tacit proof of the presence in man of that which
knows, without being told, viz:--that there is another and a better life,
once that the curse of earth-lives is lived through. 

This explanation of the problem and origin of evil being, as already said,
of an entirely metaphysical character, has nothing to do with physical laws.
Belonging as it does altogether to the spiritual part of man, to dabble with
it superficially is, therefore, far more dangerous than to remain ignorant
of it. 

For, as it lies at the very root of Gautama Buddha's ethics, and since it
has now fallen into the hands of the modern Philistines of materialism, to
confuse the two systems of "pessimistic" thought can lead but to mental
suicide, if it does not lead to worse. 

Eastern wisdom teaches that spirit has to pass through the ordeal of
incarnation and life, and be baptised with matter before it can reach
experience and knowledge. After which only it receives the baptism of soul,
or self-consciousness, and may return to its original condition of a god,
plus experience, ending with omniscience. 

In other words, it can return to the original state of the homogeneity of
primordial essence only through the addition of the fruitage of Karma, which
alone is able to create an absolute conscious deity, removed but one degree
from the absolute ALL. 

...evil must have existed before Adam and Eve, who, therefore, are innocent
of the slander of the original sin. For, had there been no evil or sin
before them, there could exist neither tempting Serpent nor a Tree of
Knowledge of good and evil in Eden. The characteristics of that ...are shown
in the verse when the couple had tasted of its fruit: "The eyes of them both
were opened, and they knew" many things ...Too much knowledge about things
of matter is thus rightly shown an evil. 

But so it is, and it is our duty to examine and combat the new pernicious
theory. Hitherto, pessimism was kept in the regions of philosophy and
metaphysics, and showed no pretensions to intrude into the domain of purely
physical science, such as Darwinism. 

The theory of evolution has become almost universal now, and there is no
school (save the Sunday and missionary schools) where it is not taught, with
more or less modifications from the original programme. 

On the other hand, there is no other teaching more abused and taken
advantage of than evolution, especially by the application of its
fundamental laws to the solution of the most compound and abstract problems
of man's many-sided existence. 

There, where psychology and even philosophy "fear to tread," materialistic
biology applies its sledge-hammer of superficial analogies and prejudiced
conclusions. Worse than all, claiming man to be only a higher animal, it
maintains this right as undeniably pertaining to the domain of the science
of evolution. 

Paradoxes in those "domains" do not rain now, they pour. As "man is the
measure of all things," therefore is man measured and analysed by the
animal. .... The Pessimists have found something more solid and
authoritative, if less philosophical, to tack their jeremiads and dirges to,
than the metaphysical kites of Schopenhauer. 

The day when they agreed with the views of this philosopher, which pointed
at the Universal WILL as the perpetrator of all the World-evil, is gone to
return no more. Nor will they be any better satisfied with the hazy
"Unconscious" of von Hartmann. They have been seeking diligently for a more
congenial and less metaphysical soil to build their pessimistic philosophy
upon, and they have been rewarded with success, now that the cause of
Universal Suffering has been discovered by them in the fundamental laws of
physical development. Evil will no longer be allied with the misty and
uncertain Phantom called "WILL," but with an actual and obvious fact: the
Pessimists will henceforth be towed by the Evolutionists. 

The basic argument of their representative has been given in the opening
sentence of this article. The Universe and all on it appeared in consequence
of the "breaking asunder of UNITY into Plurality." 

This rather dim rendering of the Indian formula is not made to refer, as I
have shown, in the mind of the Pessimist, to the one Unity, to the Vedantin
abstraction--Parabrahm: otherwise, I should certainly not have used the
words "breaking up." Nor does it concern itself much with Mulaprakriti, or
the "Veil" of Parabrahm; nor even with the first manifested primordial
matter, except inferentially, as follows from Dr. Mainlander's exposition,
but chiefly with the terrestrial protoplasm. Spirit or deity is entirely
ignored in this case; evidently because of the necessity for showing the
whole as "the lawful domain of physical Science." 

In short, the time-honoured formula is claimed to have its basis and to find
its justification in the theory that from "a few, perhaps one, single form
of the very simplest nature" (Darwin), "all the different animals and plants
living to-day, and all the organisms that have ever lived on the earth,"
have gradually developed. It is this axiom of Science, we are told, which
justifies and demonstrates the Hindu philosophical tenet. 

What is this axiom? Why, it is this: Science teaches that the series of
transformations through which the seed is made to pass--the seed that grows
into a tree, or becomes an ovum, or that which develops into an
animal--consists in every case in nothing but the passage of the fabric of
that seed, from the homogeneous into the heterogeneous or compound form.
This is then the scientific verity which checks the Indian formula by that
of the Evolutionists, identifies both, and thus exalts ancient wisdom by
recognizing it worthy of modern materialistic thought. 

This philosophical formula is not simply corroborated by the individual
growth and development of isolated species, explains our Pessimist; but it
is demonstrated in general as in detail. It is shown justified in the
evolution and growth of the Universe as well as in that of our planet. In
short, the birth, growth and development of the whole organic world in its
integral totality, are there to demonstrate ancient wisdom. 

>From the universals down to the particulars, the organic world is discovered
to be subject to the same laws of ever increasing elaboration, of the
transition from unity to plurality as "the fundamental formula of the
evolution of life." Even the growth of nations, of social life, public
institutions, the development of the languages, arts and sciences, all this
follows inevitably and fatally the all-embracing law of "the breaking
asunder of unity into plurality, and the passage of the homogeneous into
multiformity." 

But while following Indian wisdom, our author exaggerates this fundamental
law in his own way, and distorts it. He brings this law to bear even on the
historical destinies of mankind. He makes these destinies subservient to,
and a proof of, the correctness of the Indian conception. He maintains that
humanity as an integral whole, in proportion as it develops and progresses
in its evolution, and separates in its parts--each becoming a distinct and
independent branch of the unit--drifts more and more away from its original
healthy, harmonious unity. 

The complications of social establishment, social relations, as those of
individuality, all lead to the weakening of the vital power, the relaxation
of the energy of feeling, and to the destruction of that integral unity,
without which no inner harmony is possible. The absence of that harmony
generates an inner discord which becomes the cause of the greatest mental
misery. Evil has its roots in the very nature of the evolution of life and
its complications. Every one of its steps forward is at the same time a step
taken toward the dissolution of its energy, and leads to passive apathy. 

Such is the inevitable result, he says, of every progressive complication of
life; because evolution or development is a transition from the homogeneous
to the heterogeneous, a scattering of the whole into the many, etc., etc.
This terrible law is universal and applies to all creation, from the
infinitesimally small up to man for, as he says, it is a fundamental law of
nature. 

Now, it is just in this one-sided view of physical nature, which the German
author accepts without one single thought as to its spiritual and psychic
aspect, that his school is doomed to certain failure. 

It is not a question whether the said law of differentiation and its fatal
consequences may or may not apply, in certain cases, to the growth and
development of the animal species, and even of man; but simply, since it is
the basis and main support of the whole new theory of the Pessimistic
school, whether it is really a universal and fundamental law? We want to
know whether this basic formula of evolution embraces the whole process of
development and growth in its entirety; and whether, indeed, it is within
the domain of physical science or not. 

If it is "nothing else than the transition from the homogeneous state to the
heterogeneous," as says Mainlander, then it remains to be proved that the
given process "produces that complicated combination of tissues and organs
which forms and completes the perfect animal and plant." 

As remarked already by some critics on "Pessimism and Progress," the German
Pessimist does not doubt it for one moment. His supposed discovery and
teaching "rest wholly on his certitude that development and the fundamental
law of the complicated process of organization represent but one thing: the
transformation of unity into plurality." Hence the identification of the
process with dissolution and decay, and the weakening of all the forces and
energies. Mainlander would be right in his analogies were this law of the
differentiation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous to really
represent the fundamental law of the evolution of life. But the idea is
quite erroneous--metaphysically as well as physically. Evolution does not
proceed in a straight line; no more than any other process in nature, but
journeys on cyclically, as does all the rest. The cyclic serpents swallow
their tails like the Serpent of Eternity. And it is in this that the Indian
formula, which is a Secret Doctrine teaching, is indeed corroborated by the
natural Sciences, and especially by biology.
 
This is what we read in the "Scientific Letters" by an anonymous Russian
author and critic: 

In the evolution of isolated individuals, in the evolution of the organic
world, in that of the Universe, as in the growth and development of our
planet--in short wherever any of the processes of progressive complexity
take place, there we find, apart from the transition from unity to
plurality, and homogeneity to heterogeneity, a converse transformation--the
transition front plurality to unity, from the heterogeneous to the
homogeneous. . . . Minute observation of the given process of progressive
complexity has shown, that what takes place in it is not alone the
separation of parts, but also their mutual absorption. . . . While one
portion of the cells merge into each other and unite into one uniform whole.
forming muscular fibres, muscular tissue, others are absorbed in the bone
and nerve tissues, etc., etc. The same takes place in the formation of
plants. . . . 
In this case material nature repeats the law that acts in the evolution of
the psychic and the spiritual: both descend but to reascend and merge at the
starting-point. The homogeneous formative mass or element differentiated in
its parts, is gradually transformed into the heterogeneous; then, merging
those parts into a harmonious whole, it recommences a converse process, or
reinvolution, and returns as gradually into its primitive or primordial
state. 

Nor does Pessimism find any better support in pure Materialism, as hitherto
the latter has been tinged with a decidedly optimistic bias. Its leading
advocates have, indeed, never hesitated to sneer at the theological
adoration of the "glory of God and all his works." Büchner flings a tauntat
the pantheist who sees in so "mad and bad" a world the manifestation of the
Absolute. But, on the whole, the materialists admit a balance of good over
evil, perhaps as a buffer against any "superstitious" tendency to look out
and hope for a better one. Narrow as is their outlook, and limited as is
their spiritual horizon, they yet see no cause to despair of the drift of
things in general. The pantheistic pessimists, however, have never ceased to
urge that a despair of conscious being is the only legitimate outcome of
atheistic negation. This opinion is, of course, axiomatic, or ought to be
so. If "in this life only is there hope," the tragedy of life is absolutely
without any raison d'être and a perpetuation of the drama is as foolish as
it is futile. 

The fact that the conclusions of pessimism have been at last assimilated by
a certain class of atheistic writers, is a striking feature of the day, and
another sign of the times. It illustrates the truism that the void created
by modern scientific negation cannot and never can be filled by the cold
prospects offered as a solatium to optimists. The Comtean "enthusiasm of
Humanity" is a poor thing enough with annihilation of the Race to ensue "as
the solar fires die slowly out"--if, indeed, they do die at all--to please
physical science at the computed time. If all present sorrow and suffering,
the fierce struggle for existence and all its attendant horrors, go for
nothing in the long run, if MAN is a mere ephemeron, the sport of blind
forces, why assist in the perpetuation of the farce? The "ceaseless grind of
matter, force and law," will but hurry the swarming human millions into
eternal oblivion, and ultimately leave no trace or memory of the past, when
things return to the nebulosity of the fire-mist, whence they emerged.
Terrestrial life is no object in itself. It is overcast with gloom and
misery. It does not seem strange, then, that the Soul-blind negationist
should prefer the pessimism of Schopenhauer to the baseless optimism of
Strauss and his followers, which, in the face of their teachings, reminds
one of the animal spirits of a young donkey, after a good meal of thistles. 


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-----Original Message-----
From: Gerald S

Subject: Good and Evil

[Dallas:]<<The Moral side of the Universe has to be carefully and fully
studied (vice
and virtue) have to be analysed fully and to their sources and goals. >>

"Analysed?" They are two sides of the same duality. As HPB says, "If evil
disappeared, good would disappear along with it from Earth." ( SD I, 413 )

When we think that we have virtue while our neighbors have vice, we are in
trouble.

Jerry S.