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Being at one with evil

H

hypertestudo

Esteemed member
Experiencers describe being at one with everything, often after an ego death. Does that include being one with evil? Imagine an evil being: Stalin, the devil, whatever might be considered evil, objectively, subjectively, or however it might be defined, logically or not. Are we one with the devil, for example? Are you or we one with all things including evil? Or is there evil at all? Is evil just an illusion? or what is perceived as evil is not actually evil, but a characteristic that only seems evil from a particular perspective?

I might be completely wrong, but I tend to believe there is objective good and evil. There is objective truth and falsity. Jester experiences seem to question good and evil, or truth and falsity, to reveal absurdities or misperceptions or misconceptions. Or perhaps, jester experiences are there to deconstruct our cognitive dissonances or poorly conceived notions of good/evil and truth/falsity.

Here is the primary question for this thread, for those who have experienced being one with everything: 1) does that include being one with evil? and 2) is being one with evil absurd or inexplicable? Or is there an objective evil (and good) and we/one are both evil and good? 3) other thoughts on being one with evil?
 
I'm having a hard time coming to grips with this
ShadedSelf said:
evil comes from separation and is essentially illusory
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For example, an innocent child is abducted, sexually abused, tortured in the most horrific ways, and murdered. Is this not objectively evil? How is this illusory in any way? If the child has some identity that continues to exist beyond this life, how is that child not psychologically or emotionally wrecked? Are you suggesting that at ("illusory"?) physical death, the child is no longer separated or is reunified as one, and there is no harm done? Is the child's separate identity illusory? How can it be both one and separate?
 
I think you may need to reframe this. You're not so much being one with "evil" as much as you are being one with the overall capacity for "evil", in yourself and in existence. When we talk about something being "evil" we speak about it by way of the actions and "motivations" we see and the overall outcome, so something needs to be able to transmit "evil" similar to how matter transmits gravity.

I might be completely wrong, but I tend to believe there is objective good and evil. There is objective truth and falsity. Jester experiences seem to question good and evil, or truth and falsity, to reveal absurdities or misperceptions or misconceptions. Or perhaps, jester experiences are there to deconstruct our cognitive dissonances or poorly conceived notions of good/evil and truth/falsity.
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Read more philosophy ;)

One love
 
Voidmatrix said:
something needs to be able to transmit "evil" similar to how matter transmits gravity.
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It exists only in the sense that it is an emergent property of having "free will". You can choose to do anything, it's the things you believe that guide you to do "good" or "bad" things.

And that tends to be a group concensus because we all want different things, we just collectively choose to do things that don't hurt anyone else in various ways.
 
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Koduckushi said:
The child isn't evil, nor is it illusory. You're mixing up the infliction of evil with the one who receives it.
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Disagree, and you are mischaracterizing my post. I never implicitly or explicitly suggested the child is evil or illusory. That is your projection and reading into my post.

By conventional understanding, all of the motivation, intention, and the act harming the child are evil. If we are all "one", is the innocent child, and the evil-doer, who inflicted evil on the child, also "one"? It stretches credulity and logic.

Voidmatrix said:
Read more philosophy ;)
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JFC. Arrogant, presumptuous and immature. Precisely, what philosophy? Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, other early Greeks, Ottomans, DesCartes, Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Russell, Quine, etc, etc.? Ethical? Epistemological? Ontological? blah. blah. I have a formal education and degree in philosophy among other credentials, and a deep and broad bed of life experience personally and professionally. It's why I ask and engage in the questions on this forum. Maybe I'm giving too much credit to people on this forum, and should seek a higher caliber of engagement. So far much of the responses lack rigor of thought, logical consistency, persuasion, insight, and so forth.


Voidmatrix said:
I think you may need to reframe this. You're not so much being one with "evil" as much as you are being one with the overall capacity for "evil", in yourself and in existence. When we talk about something being "evil" we speak about it by way of the actions and "motivations" we see and the overall outcome, so something needs to be able to transmit "evil" similar to how matter transmits gravity.
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Reframe? 😒 Maybe you need to reread my post and reconsider your reading comprehension. Evil, however defined. It's very broadly and adequately framed. Whether in me, something else, the One, capacity, actions, motivations, outcome, transmissible, etc, etc. Typically, I tend to be more gracious in approaching and responding to posts, but when someone makes an unwarranted and offensive presumption... Well, consider reading some philosophy, VM. Maybe thinking and posting with better rigor and consistency as well. Jackass.
 
hypertestudo said:
I have a formal education and degree in philosophy among other credentials, and a deep and broad bed of life experience personally and professionally. It's why I ask and engage in the questions on this forum. Maybe I'm giving too much credit to people on this forum, and should seek a higher caliber of engagement. So far much of the responses lack rigor of thought, logical consistency, persuasion, insight, and so forth.
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I've found that when someone needs to share such things, unsolicited about themselves, they likely don't possess the type of "rigor of thought, " "logical consistency," "insight," etc, themselves.

However, you're pretty hurt over an obvious philosophic joke (which you think you would've gotten given your "extensive" background).

hypertestudo said:
Reframe? 😒 Maybe you need to reread my post and reconsider your reading comprehension. Evil, however defined. It's very broadly and adequately framed. Whether in me, something else, the One, capacity, actions, motivations, outcome, transmissible, etc, etc. Typically, I tend to be more gracious in approaching and responding to posts, but when someone makes an unwarranted and offensive presumption... Well, consider reading some philosophy, VM. Maybe thinking and posting with better rigor and consistency as well. Jackass.
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I'm thinking you didn't understand what I said.

But that's okay. It looks like someone missed their nap and are cranky so they can enjoy a timeout.

Be well.

One love
 
hypertestudo said:
For example, an innocent child is abducted, sexually abused, tortured in the most horrific ways, and murdered. Is this not objectively evil? How is this illusory in any way? If the child has some identity that continues to exist beyond this life, how is that child not psychologically or emotionally wrecked? Are you suggesting that at ("illusory"?) physical death, the child is no longer separated or is reunified as one, and there is no harm done? Is the child's separate identity illusory? How can it be both one and separate?
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Just to reiterate, Im just sharing my opinion.
That said, yes, we could call that objectively evil, the experience you are describing and its effects are very real. The axiom that Im taking here is that anything which involves separation is illusory, which is basically our daily experience, dreams can feel very real, all come to light no harm is done, nothing is lost, forgiveness allows such blockages you are mentioning to be disolved.
"How can it be both one and separate?" Its not separate, but thats how it feels, its our day to day experience, kinda the whole point of life, we wouldnt play poker if we knew each other hands.

Voidmatrix said:
Does this mean that in this unity there is also no "good?"

Does this pertain to any and all acts and actions including intents and motivations behind them?
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Let me be slightly cryptic: white contais all, yet is not a "color" itself. I think the idea is to move beyond duality, the merger of the male and the female does not yield neutrality but rather joy and peace.

I dont think there is action in unity, only awarness, so Im assuming we are talking about our human endeavours, my understanding is that spiritual evolution requires certain aligment towards union with the self and others, you might judge actions as you will, good and evil is a valid way to look at it, albeit a restless one ime. Intentions might be a more fruitful place to look at, Id just focus on honesty rather than duality.
 
hypertestudo said:
Disagree, and you are mischaracterizing my post. I never implicitly or explicitly suggested the child is evil or illusory. That is your projection and reading into my post.

By conventional understanding, all of the motivation, intention, and the act harming the child are evil. If we are all "one", is the innocent child, and the evil-doer, who inflicted evil on the child, also "one"? It stretches credulity and logic.
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And you mischaracterized my proclamation. You're actually just blaming the victim by feeding into the idea that there is a 'one' in your example.
I can tell you don't believe it, but I don't want to agree by only engaging in the metaphysical concepts. Apologies that it came off strong.

If we [read: Humanity] want moral justice, we're the only arbiter we know of that actually facilitates leveling the playing field for everyone. This isn't about fancy philosophical or potentially dogmatic ideas, it's about doing right by our fellow humans.

Re-reading your questions in the title post, I see that I missed the point, and for that I'm sorry.

hypertestudo said:
1) does that include being one with evil? and 2) is being one with evil absurd or inexplicable? Or is there an objective evil (and good) and we/one are both evil and good? 3) other thoughts on being one with evil?
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1: that feels kind of a loaded question. I don't think about these things in there. I just experience oneness. love kind of excludes hateful things because they can't build anything stable.
2: haven't personally experienced being aware of evil during an experience. Ironically I do find that paradoxical. I think it was said above well, we have a great capacity for evil.
3: I don't have too much to say in the first place. It isn't something I put a lot of stock in.


I don't know what that sense of oneness is truly, so I stopped speculating these questions. I try to go with my gut feeling about things. It's all just a wonderfully insightful view into existence to me.
 
When I have experience complete unity, the experience felt not only beyond good and evil, but beyond any concept at all. Concepts really made no sense then and make no sense to transmit the experience, and evil is a concept. That doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't correspond to a certain aspect of reality, but in the unity experiences there was no perception of labels or capacity to label at all. Also no language and no "I". These experiences were with LSD, by the way.
 
blig-blug said:
When I have experience complete unity, the experience felt not only beyond good and evil, but beyond any concept at all. Concepts really made no sense then and make no sense to transmit the experience, and evil is a concept. That doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't correspond to a certain aspect of reality, but in the unity experiences there was no perception of labels or capacity to label at all. Also no language and no "I". These experiences were with LSD, by the way.
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My experiences mirror this as well
 
I believe in balance. I believe I must embrace my own light and dark. If I do not, if I strive to only experience happiness and comfort, I pass that burden on to another soul.

As an example, a purely evil soul must be balanced by a purely good soul. So in some sense, a purely good soul is responsible for a purely bad soul.

Choice about being good or evil is a whole other topic perhaps.

But for me, I try to embrace my own light and dark. I don't want my darkness to be picked up by or inflicted on another soul.
 
Being one/interconnected to beings who do evil things doesn't mean being one with evil. There are acts that are objectively evil but the beings that do them are not evil by nature. The way to feel connected to people who do evil things is to imagine that, if you had lived their same life till that moment, you would have done the same evil things.

Like you, i find it difficult to feel connected to people who did certain things, but a way to do it is to see all evil actions as stemming from suffering. If you see that a person doing an evil thing is doing that thing because of their own suffering that projects onto others, you can start having compassion for that person. It's not easy and i know this kind of discourse can be seen as a justification of some crimes but it's not really like that. I usually do this "mental excercise" not to justify people but to feel less scared by them and by evil in general. But i don't really like to think about evil things, i just do it when i encounter something evil in real life and that's more than enough for me.

Anyway don't worry, being one/connected to everyone else doesn't mean being one with evil itself. I don't believe in a being who is pure evil energy. There are only evil acts.

There is a picture i've seen of a demon practicing meditation because even a demon has the nature of awakening. The demon in the picture is cute so it's easier to identify with the demon.

The problems of evil and of suffering are something it's hard to come to terms with.
 
I read no philosophy. Post COVID reading more than a few paragraphs is very difficult. I have a reply but it is not deep, it is just based on my own experience.


Evil exists. So does good. Evil is actions/words that by their nature are meant to increase suffering in others.

Good is words/actions that try to lessen/negate suffering in others. All of these concepts (good, evil, actions, existence, suffering) are a result of being embedded in both culture and body.

The absolute Unity/ALL ONE state negates all of the above factors - there is no body, no culture, no desire, no suffering, and whatever came before (embedded in culture/body) is found to be part of the greater unity. My mother is right there next to Hitler. I don't doubt it for a moment.

I think the 13th Century poet Rumi pretty much nails it:

Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn't make any sense.
 


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