Good and Evil

Discourses by Meher Baba

THE human mind is not only going through experiences but is constantly evaluating them. Some experiences are regarded as agreeable and some disagreeable; some experiences are found to bring happiness and some suffering; some experiences are received as being pleasant and some unpleasant; some experiences are apprehended as restricting the life of man and some as leading it towards fullness and freedom; and some experiences are looked upon as being good and some bad. These are the opposites created by human imagination when it is meeting life with a particular point of view.

Man’s conception of what is acceptable or unacceptable goes on evolving and changing according to the nature of desires which happen to be dominant at any particular moment. But, as long as there is any kind of desire in his mind, he is impelled to appraise his experience in relation to that desire and divide it into two parts, the one contributing towards its fulfillment and therefore acceptable, and the other tending to prevent its fulfillment and therefore unacceptable. Instead of meeting life and all that it brings without expectation, entanglement or shirking, the mind creates a standard whereby it divides life into opposites, one of which is regarded as acceptable and the other as not acceptable.

Of the opposites created by the human mind the division between good and bad is spiritually most significant. It is based upon man’s desire to be free from the limitation of all desires. Those experiences and actions which increase the fetters of desire are bad, and those experiences and actions which tend to emancipate the mind from limiting desires are good. Since good experiences and actions also exist in relation to desire, they also bind in the same way as do bad experiences and actions. All binding can truly disappear only when all desires disappear; therefore true freedom comes when good and bad balance each other and become so merged into each other that they leave no room for any choice by the limited self of desire.

When human consciousness is fully developed we already find in it a preponderance of bad elements, since at the sub-human stages of evolution consciousness has been chiefly operating under limiting tendencies like lust, greed and anger. The experiences and actions created and sustained by such ego-centered tendencies have left their imprints on the developing mind and the mind has stored these imprints in the same manner as film records the movement of actors. It is therefore easy to be bad and difficult to be good. Animal life, from which human consciousness emerges, is mostly determined by animal lust, animal greed and animal anger, though some animals do at times develop the good qualities of self-sacrifice, love and patience. If all the accumulated animal sanskaras had been bad and none good, the appearance of good tendencies in human consciousness would have been impossible.

Though some animal sanskaras are good, most are bad; so, at the start, human consciousness finds itself subject to a propelling force which is mostly bad. Right from the beginning of human evolution, the problem of emancipation consists in cultivating and developing good sanskaras so that they may overlap and annul the accumulated sanskaras. The cultivation of good sanskaras is achieved by fostering experiences and actions which are opposite to those that predominate in animal life. The opposite of lust is love, the opposite of greed is generosity, and the opposite of anger is tolerance or patience. By trying to dwell in love, generosity and tolerance, man can erase the tendencies of lust, greed and anger.

The general process of freeing oneself from the limitation of sanskaras has, therefore, to be accompanied by the process of renouncing the bad for the good. But whether a person happens to be good or bad at any given time is dependent upon the inexorable operation of his sanskaras. From this point of view the sinner and the saint are both what they are according to the laws operative in the universe. They have both the same beginning and the same end. The sinner need not have the stigma of eternal degradation and the saint need not have pride in his moral attainments. No one, however saintly he may be, has attained the heights of moral virtues except after a life of moral failings, and no one is so bad as to be unable to improve and become good. Everyone, no matter how depraved, can gradually become better and better until he becomes the best example for all mankind. There is always hope for everyone; none is utterly lost and none need despair. It remains true, however, that the way to divinity lies through the renunciation of evil in favour of the good.

The gradual unfoldment of good brings in its train love, generosity and peace. The good sanskaras deposited by the manifestations of these qualities overlap and balance the opposite bad sanskaras of lust, greed and anger. When there is an exact balancing and overlapping of good and bad sanskaras there is at once a termination of both types of sanskaras and the precipitation of consciousness from a state of bondage to a state of freedom. The credit and debit sides must be exactly equal to each other if the account is to be closed. But usually, either the debit side is greater or the credit side is greater and the account is kept running. It is important to note that the account is kept running not only by excess of the debit side but also by excess of the credit side. It can be closed only when the two sides balance each other. In the field of sanskaras such balance is a rare happening because at any particular time, either the good or bad sanskaras are predominant. Just as the account can be kept running by excess of either the debit or credit side, so the life of the limited self is prolonged and sustained through the excess of either bad or good sanskaras. The limited self can linger through good sanskaras as well as bad sanskaras. What is required for its final extinction is an exact balancing and overlapping of the bad and good sanskaras.

The problem of the exact balancing and overlapping of the good and bad sanskaras is not a mathematical problem of matching equal amounts. If it were purely a question of equal quantities it could be solved solely through the persistent accumulation of the good sanskaras .

If there is a cessation or slowing down of the accumulation of bad sanskaras, and if, side by side, there is an unceasing accumulation of good sanskaras at a greater rate, sooner or later good sanskaras would be a quantitative match for the accumulated bad sanskaras and they would effect the necessary balancing. For emancipation of consciousness, the good and bad sanskaras have not only to balance each other in strength, but there has to be a point to point overlapping of the one opposite by the other. So, in a sense, the problem before each centre of consciousness is a specific problem relating to the qualitative variety of the nature of accumulated sanskaras.

If the accumulation of good sanskaras proceeds irrespective of the specific constitution of the existing sanskaras, there is a possibility of accumulating in some directions an excess of good sanskaras, side by side with the existence of bad sanskaras of a different type. For example, through self-mortification and severe types of asceticism some forms of attachment might be annulled but other forms of attachment may remain untouched by these practices and may continue to exist. The aspirant is not only likely to ignore the forms of attachment which have remained untouched, but he may even carry on further his practices of self-mortification and asceticism by the propelling force of the sanskaras created by these very practices. In such case an excess of good sanskaras is being created without termination of the limited ego. Even if the other forms of attachment remaining untouched are subsequently undone, the ego can get transferred to these new good sanskaras and continue to live through them.

Emancipation is not a matter of mere accumulation of virtue, it requires intelligent adjustment of sanskaras. Each centre of consciousness is unconsciously gravitating towards the final emancipation of Truth-realisation, and there is a natural tendency in the mind to invite to itself just that opposite which would meet the spiritual requirements of the situation. But it is not a mechanical and automatic process which can be left to itself independent of intelligent and right effort on the part of the aspirant. More often than not the aspirant finds it impossible to strike upon the really needful unless he has the good fortune to have the unfailing help of the Master, who alone has a direct and unerring insight into exactly what is necessary in a specific case.

It has been seen that good sanskaras can be the medium for the lingering life of the limited self. When a person looks upon himself as being good and not bad, he is engaged in self-affirmation through identification with this conviction, which is a continuation of separative existence in a new form. In some cases this new house which the ego constructs for itself is more difficult to dismantle, because self-identification with the good is often more complete than self-identification with the bad. Identification with the bad is easier to deal with because, as soon as the bad is perceived as being bad, its grip on consciousness becomes less firm. The loosening of the grip of the good presents a more difficult problem, since the good carries a semblance of self-justification through favourable contrast with the bad. However, in course of time the aspirant gets tired of his new prison-house, and after this perception he surrenders his separative existence by transcending the duality of good and bad.

The ego changes the house of identification with evil for the house of identification with good because the latter gives him a greater sense of expansion. Sooner or later the aspirant perceives the new abode to be no less of a limitation. Then he finds that the process of breaking through it is less difficult than the process of breaking through the former abode of identification with the evil. The difficulty concerning the abode of evil is is not so much of perceiving that it is a limitation but in actually dismantling it after arriving at such perception. The difficulty concerning the abode of the good is not so much in dismantling it as of perceiving that it is, in fact, a limitation. This difference arises because the animal sanskaras are more firmly rooted owing to their ancient origin and long term of accumulation. It is important to note that the good binds as much as the evil, though the binding of the good can be more easily undone after it is perceived as being a limitation.

The ego lives either through bad sanskaras or through good sanskaras, or through a mixture of good and bad sanskaras. Therefore the emancipation of consciousness from all sanskaras can come either through the good sanskaras balancing and overlapping bad sanskaras; or, through some good sanskaras balancing and overlapping bad sanskaras, and some bad sanskaras balancing and overlapping good sanskaras. If a dish is filthy you may cleanse it by covering it with soap and washing it with water. This is like good sanskaras overlapping bad sanskaras. Now if the dish is full of grease, one way of getting rid of the grease is to cover it with dust and then wash it with water. Dust is the most greaseless thing in the world and, in a sense, the opposite of grease, so that when dust is applied to the dish tainted with grease it is easy to cleanse it. This is like bad sanskaras overlapping good sanskaras. When there is exact balancing and overlapping of good and bad sanskaras, they both disappear, with the result that what remains is a clean slate of mind on which nothing is written, and which therefore reflects the Truth as it is without perversion. Realisation free from sanskaras and beyond good and bad. Nothing is ever written on the soul. The sanskaras are deposited on the mind and not on the soul. The soul always remains untarnished, but it is only when the mind is a clean mirror that it can reflect the Truth. When the impressions of good and bad both disappear the mind sees the soul. This is Illumination. The mind seeing the soul, however, is not the same as the soul knowing itself, for the soul is not the mind, but God, Who is beyond the mind. Therefore, even after the mind has seen the soul, it has to be merged in the soul if the soul is to know itself in Truth. This is Realisation. In this state the mind itself with all its good and bad sanskaras has disappeared. It is a state beyond mind, and therefore it is also beyond the distinction of good and bad. From the point of view of this state there is only one indivisible existence characterised by infinite love, peace, bliss and knowledge. The perpetual strife between good and evil has disappeared because there is neither good nor evil, only one inclusive and undivided life of God.