The Book of Secrets - Deepak Chopra [53]
People in different states of awareness won’t share the same definition of good and bad. A prime example is the social enslavement of women around the world, which seems totally wrong in the modern world but is fed in many countries by tradition, religious sanction, social value, and family practices, going back for centuries. Until very recently, even the victims of those forces would see the role of the helpless, obedient, childlike woman as “good.”
Evil depends completely on one’s level of consciousness.
You can bring this message home by considering seven different definitions of evil. Which one do you instinctively agree with?
WHAT IS THE WORST EVIL?
Seven Perspectives
1. The worst evil is to hurt someone physically, or endanger their survival.
2. The worst evil is to enslave people economically, depriving them of any chance to succeed and prosper.
3. The worst evil is to destroy peace and bring about disorder.
4. The worst evil is to entrap people’s minds.
5. The worst evil is to destroy beauty, creativity, and the freedom to explore.
6. The worst evil is often difficult to tell from good, since all of creation is relative.
7. There is no evil, only the shifting patterns of consciousness in an eternal dance.
The vast majority of people would probably choose the first two definitions, because physical harm and deprivation are so threatening. At this level of consciousness, evil means not being able to survive or earn a living, and good means physical safety and economic security. In the next two levels, evil is no longer physical but mental. One’s greatest terror isn’t being deprived of food but rather being told what to think and forced to live with chaos and unrest. Good means inner peace and the free flow of insight and intuition. The next two levels are even more refined; they have to do with creativity and vision. One’s greatest fear is not being allowed to express oneself or being forced to label others as evil. A deeply spiritual person doesn’t view good and evil as rigid categories but has begun to accept that God had a purpose in creating both. Good is free expression, openness to all new things, reverence for both the dark and light aspects of life. Finally, the last level sees the entire play of good and evil, light and shadow, as an illusion. Every experience brings union with the creator; one lives as a co-creator immersed in God consciousness.
The one reality accepts all these definitions, as it must, because anything that consciousness can perceive is real to the perceiver. Evil is part of a hierarchy, a ladder of growth in which everything changes depending on the rung you happen to be standing on. Nor does the growing process ever end. It is at work in you at this very minute.
If you wake up one day to suddenly discover that you hate someone else, that there is no way out of a situation except violence, that love isn’t an option, consider how subtly you arrived at your position. It took a whole world to throw you or anyone else into the arms of what is labeled as good or evil. Having internalized these forces, you reflect the world just as the world reflects you. This is what it means in practical terms to have the world in you.
Yet evil cannot be your enemy if the world is in you; it can only be another aspect of yourself. Every aspect of the self is worthy of love and compassion. Every aspect is necessary to life, and none is excluded or banished into darkness. This view may seem even more naive at first than Gandhi’s passivity, for it appears that we are being asked