What About Evil?

He can turn the tides and calm the angry sea.
He alone decides who writes a symphony.
He lights evr’y star that makes the darkness bright!
He keeps watch all through each long and lonely night!

He still finds the time to hear a child’s first prayer.
Saint or sinner calls and always finds Him there.
Though it makes Him sad to see the way we live,
He’ll always say, “I forgive.”
– Richard Mullan & Al Hibbler (1915-2001), from “He” (1954)

Two emailed questions that people ask me more often than any others are whether or not there is a devil, and whether or not there is a hell. And I generally answer these questions by saying that while of course there is no fiery hell, there is indeed an outer darkness, which is the lowest afterlife level. But God never puts us there. No, we ourselves are the only ones who can ever put ourselves into the outer darkness if we do something in our lives for which we have trouble forgiving ourselves when we experience it during our post-death life review. So learning self-forgiveness while we are alive is an especially important task! And as for the devil, well, he might exist, but since he has no power at all, you can ignore him. But the follow-up emails that I sometimes get for these answers suggest that for many people, my responses have missed their mark. What lots of people really want to know in answer to their questions about hell and the devil is whether there is some secret truth that I can give them that will make all their deepest childhood terrors go away forevermore. By some miracle, is there somewhere a very powerful and deeply comforting complete answer?

  Well, yes, I think that there actually is. But delivering it will take longer than it takes to give them a quickly-written and emailed response.

By now, most regular readers here understand that the only thing that actually exists is what we experience as consciousness. And consciousness is an energy-like and highly emotional potentiality that exists in a deep range of vibrations, from very high and rapid to very low and slow. Consciousness is alive in the sense that your mind is alive, and at its highest vibration it is perfect love. At its lowest vibration it is fear, anger, hatred, and all the other unpleasant emotions. At its highest vibration, consciousness is infinitely powerful. Consciousness at its highest vibration is God.

At its lowest vibration, however, consciousness has no power at all. We are talking about all of reality, now – the earth and all the galaxies – and as amazing as this sounds, emotion-based and timeless consciousness is all that there is, all that there ever was, and all that there ever is going to be. It is very important that you first get your mind around this central fact of our existence. Before we talk about anything else, it is essential that you understand that your mind and my mind and every other human mind all are part together of this one great Mind. We all live rather cozily as part of the illusion that you might fondly think of as the Mind of God; and frankly, if you keep that fact always in mind, it dispels a lot of your fears right off the bat! Before we move on to talk about hell and the devil, please read these two paragraphs about consciousness again thoughtfully, one more time.

 So, I think that we can largely dispense with hell as an issue. The only sort-of version of a “hell” that actually exists is that awful lowest afterlife level which is cold, dark, smelly, and disgusting. It’s what Jesus called “the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth” (see MT 8:12, MT 22:13, and MT 25:30).  And since we are the only ones who ever can condemn ourselves to  the outer darkness, and we do that only if we fail to forgive ourselves for something that we have done in life, then for us simply to learn self-forgiveness while we are alive is our complete and fail-safe solution to that worry.

Please note that every Gospel mention by Jesus of “Gehenna” is not a reference to hell either, but rather it is just a mention of the valley outside Jerusalem where trash was often burned. Jesus talks about Gehenna in the Gospels several times, and early Biblical translators often interpreted that word as “hell”; but that, plus Biblical translators’ misunderstanding of the outer darkness, is why some scholars now say that Jesus talked about hell more often than anyone else did. Which certainly is not true! Please note, too, that some other mentions of hell as a fiery place of punishment that appear to come from Jesus were coming from councilors who were working for the Roman Emperor Constantine at First Nicaea in 325, who were creating for him his new religion. And they appear to have been eager to find or to introduce fear into this new religion which was being created as a fear-based means of control. This earth is a place for learning and spiritual growth above all! And for us instead to be condemned by God to burn in hell forevermore for even trivial mistakes made in the course of our efforts to learn and grow spiritually would be nonsensical. So I feel comfortable in assuring you that, no indeed, there is no fiery hell, and our genuine God of perfect love certainly never would condemn us to it in any event.

A brief mention ought also to be made of the fact that some version of hell does rarely turn up in near-death experiences (NDEs). It has been estimated that about one in seven NDEs are negative or even hellish, but that doesn’t matter since NDEs are merely out-of-body experiences (OBEs) in the nature of dreams which are managed for us by our own spirit guides. NDE experiencers never go to the actual afterlife, and neither do they ever go to any actual hell.  

Okay then, so what about the devil? Here the answer is more complicated. I devoutly wish the truth were otherwise, but in fact there are indeed a whole variety of invisible “ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy  beasties and things that go bump in the night,” as the Bible and the old Scottish prayer together insist to us that indeed there are. These nasty guys were terrified of Jesus, so He had considerable dealings with them, and probably all of us have at least some dealings with them in the course of our lives without being much aware of it. There likely also is an actual devil, or a Satan if you prefer to use that name. And many of these critters can trouble your life if you allow that to happen. But you should not be afraid of any of them, and that includes even the devil itself. To be afraid of them gives them power over you, and in fact your fear is the only pitiful little bit of power that they ever have. I have never set out to study demonish beings. But I have encountered information about them in my travels. Here, briefly, is a list of the most common kinds of evil discarnate entities:

The Devil. There probably is one or more of these. I know very little about devils or their history, and that is the way things will remain. I urge you not to show any curiosity about the devil or devils, since even to think about the devil very much can attract its energies to you. But the devil does show up in the Biblical Gospels interacting with Jesus (see MT 4). His role there was to tempt Jesus with the world’s riches, of course without success.Demons. There are lesser negative entities that are not even fully-formed beings as such, so they need to possess the bodies of susceptible beings in order to have any real existence. They seem to exist in small groups, and they go around causing trouble. People have spiritual auras, and as long as we maintain our auras intact, they protect us from possession by demons; but becoming very drunk or very high on drugs or very ill can damage our auras. You will recall the demons that Jesus cast into the herd of swine (MT 8:30-32).Shadow Men. No kidding, the most evil entities of all are so powerless that they have to lurk in closets and jump out and scare little children because they feed on fear. (And yes, such beings really do exist.) If there is just a bit of light in the room to serve as a night-light, these things have no power at all. So all babies and little children should be given night-lights, and they should never be left to cry in the dark because without the protection of night-lights in babies’ bedrooms these guys will latch on to certain little ones in childhood, and then will plague them even as adults unless their victims always sleep with a light on.Deceased Addicts. People who die while they are addicted to drugs, alcohol, or sex will often refuse to transition, but will instead hang around alleys, bars, or wherever they mistakenly think that they can get their fix of what they still are craving. My own father was an alcoholic until he quit cold-turkey when I was eleven, and he had a possessing alcoholic spirit, or perhaps several such spirits, who gave an odd greenish caste to his eyes. His possessors only left him once he had conquered his own addiction. Anyone who gets very drunk in a bar, or who shoots up in a place where others have gotten high, or who participates in orgies where others also have engaged in group sex is going to shred his or her protective aura briefly, and will then pick up such hitchhikers, almost guaranteed. And since these dead addicts have material cravings that now can never be satisfied, once you are possessed by one or more dead addicts, your own addiction will become that much harder for you ever to cure.Executed Criminals. If you need another reason to be against capital punishment, you might think of this as the ultimate form of air pollution. What capital punishment does is to set loose upon the world an invisible disembodied spirit at the height of his deadly rage, who in life was a murderous criminal and knew that he was about to be killed and had a vicious motive and plenty of time before dying to plot his revenge upon the world. My goodness, talk about air pollution!

Just what is evil, anyway? Its literal definition would be the opposite of love, the opposite of spiritual growth, and therefore the opposite of what you and I are born here on earth to try to achieve.  So that is what evil is, and it is to be rejected in every way and at all costs.

The fortunate thing about evil, though, is that the more evil any entity is, the less power it has on the consciousness specrum. General wisdom has it that the most evil entities of all are the Shadow Men, who go around in top hats and capes scaring babies in the dark so they can feed on their screams, because otherwise they don’t have sufficient energy even to lift their heads, or to move at all. And if there is anything more pathetic than that, I cannot at the moment think of what it might be. But, yes, all these invisible negative dudes can trouble your peace if you ever let them in. 

So, how can you protect yourself from evil beings, and even from the devil itself? The only way that you really can protect yourself is by learning to ever more perfectly live in love. You can work on raising your personal consciousness vibration far above anger and fear, and then you can never again in your earthly life allow yourself to have an even remotely evil thought. The easiest way to do this is with the teachings of Jesus. You begin by loving God, and you spread your love for God to all of humankind, because remember that in Consciousness we are all one Being. You never watch a scary movie, either. You never read a scary book. And if there is, let’s say, a coldish place in your house, or a spot where you think that something evil might be trying to lurk, you send it only thoughts of love and kindness and pity. The last thing you must ever do is to be afraid of that cold spot in your darkened hallway! No. Instead, you love it. And even better, pity it. If you thought of yourself as a scary monster, wouldn’t you be demoralized and shrink away sadly if someone only pitied you? Say, “Oh, you poor little thing!” to it aloud, and really mean it, and you will feel the temperature rise in that dark corner. Oh my dear ones, I know how amazing this sounds, but in this great ultimate game of life, the Good Guys truly can always win!

He can touch a tree and turn the leaves to gold.
He knows every lie that you and I have told.
Though it makes Him sad to see the way we live,
He’ll always say, “I forgive!”
Richard Mullan & Al Hibbler (1915-2001), from “He” (1954)

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